Parting the Clouds 1 -- The Infection
by Derinthemadscientist
Summary: Parting the Clouds is an Animorphs AU in which Cassie is recast as a rationalist. It is inspired by works such as Luminosity and Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality.
1. Chapter 1

My name is Cassie.

That could be a lie. And I won't tell you my last name. Or where I live. Not for security reasons; if you've found this journal then that means you already know who I am. Or it means that the war is over, and it's safe for me to release this to the public. In either case, with the information in here, merely hiding my name and location would not protect us.

I won't tell you who I am because it is irrelevant. It does not matter if you love or hate us. It does not matter if we live next door to you or on the other side of the world. If the war is over then I'm sure that whatever the media has said about us is a lie. It might a lie in our favour, depending on how things turned out, but I doubt very much that anything you've been told is the whole truth. This is the whole truth; this is what happened to a nameless, locationless, thirteen year old human girl.

It's hard to know where some stories really start. This is not one of those stories. This story started one Friday night, when I was at the mall with Rachel. She was dragging me between sales racks, looking for a very specific cut of jeans that probably didn't exist.

"They're not here," I moaned for about the twentieth time. "We looked. We tried. Let's go home."

She shot me a pitying look. "Do you always give up so easily?"

"Only when the task is pointless."

"We had a deal. I help you clean your dad's barn on Thursday. You come shopping with me on Friday."

I sighed. "When did we become so different?" But she was right; a deal was a deal. And she _had_ helped me clean the barn.

She pulled a pair of jeans from a display bench and held them against her own waist with a thoughtful frown. I could tell from her expression that they weren't the cut she was looking for, but nevertheless she looked at me. "Thoughts?"

I looked her up and down. Tall, athletic Rachel with her long, straight blonde hair braided in what looked like a normal braid to me but was probably some super-fashionable revolution in hair-twisting, wearing a pale blue top that I was sure I'd find in the most prominent and well-regarded fashion magazines if I should care to look, posing with what looked to me like any other pair of jeans.

"You look great," I said. "You always look great. Can we go now?"

"Do you mean that, or are you trying to cut this shopping trip short?"

"... both?"

Rachel looked like she was going to respond, but her eyes caught sight of something behind me and lit up. "A-ha!" She reached around me and grabbed a hanger. Upon the hanger was another pair of jeans, looking basically the same as the pair she was holding. "Found them. I'm just going to try these on real quick, ok?"

"I'll be here."

She gave me a little wave as she headed for the changing rooms, carrying herself with that sort of undefinable grace that she always carried about her like an aura. "Undefinable", that is, unless you know the secret, which is that she's a gymnast. Too tall to ever pull it off professionally, she says, but it lends her a certain balance and poise.

I found a display of chunky plastic accessories to pick through while she changed. Both physically and in terms of personality, I'm the antithesis of Rachel; she's tall and pale, I'm short and black. She wears her hair very long, I wear mine very short. Her outfits are color-coordinated and cut to her body shape, I consider the concept of 'outfit' to be unnecessary. Clothes are clothes. The body's just a tool to carry the mind around in, anyway. Why spend huge amounts of time trying to decorate it? To draw the attention of jerks who thought that kind of thing was important?

I was considering whether I should buy a powder-blue chunky plastic bracelet for myself to make Rachel happy when I felt somebody come up behind me.

"Cassie?"

I turned to face a boy; tall, with neatly trimmed brown hair and deep, dark eyes. He gave me a crooked, slightly shy grin.

"Jake," I said. "Hi." Jake was Rachel's cousin. He was into basketball and video games instead of gymnastics and fashion, but just by looking you could tell they were cousins. I felt my own heartbeat quicken and hoped I wasn't noticeably blushing.

I might sort of have a thing for Jake.

"I thought it was you," Jake said. "How have you been?"

"Oh, fine. I was just shopping with Rachel," I said, as if I needed to justify my presence in a public mall. "She's trying on some stuff."

"We were just playing video games at the arcade." He jerked a thumb over his shoulder, as if it was somehow possible I wasn't aware of the brightly lit arcade right across from the clothing shop.

"By 'playing video games'," another familiar voice said from behind a rack of clothing, "he means keeping the arcade in business with our allowances, because certain people keep forgetting that the SleazeTroll shows up right after you cross the Nether Fjord. So certain people keep losing the game – and our quarter." The speaker, a skinny, coffee-skinned boy with loose shoulder length hair who was even shorter than me, jerked his thumb at Jake in case I couldn't figure out who he meant by 'certain people'. Jake rolled his eyes.

"Nobody keeps notes on the order of appearance of monsters in arcade games, Marco," he said. "That is not normal."

"Who keeps notes? It's called paying attention to the game. It's called realising that you have three seconds after the Nether Fjord before the Troll's intro starts to begin reserving energy for your power attack, and those three seconds can save your life. It's called taking less than seven tries to realise you should be pumping energy the moment you step off the bridge."

"Oh, sure, you say that when last weekend – "

"Last weekend was a one-off. I'll prove it. Tomorrow, your place, you against me. Actually, I'll do you one better. You can have Tobias on your team." Marco jerked his thumb as a kid loitering awkwardly behind him, eyeing a rack of clothing as if it was part of some kind of trap. He stood out in the clothing shop more than I did; lanky, with unkempt dirty-blonde hair and baggy clothes that looked at least third-hand. I'd seen him hanging around Jake at school a bit, but we'd never spoken. I offered him a friendly smile. He responded with a short, somewhat friendly nod.

"They fit!" Rachel exclaimed, rushing towards me. "Both pairs!" Her eyes caught the bracelet I was trying on. "Oh, you found something. Good. It looks cute on you." She glanced up at the boys. "Hi, guys. Just let me borrow Cassie for a moment so we can pay for this stuff."

It seems so strange, looking back on it now. If I'd had any inkling what the future had in store for us…

"You guys going home?" Jake asked Rachel as she said goodbye to the cashier. "You shouldn't go through the construction site by yourselves. I mean, being girls and all."

That was a mistake.

"Are you going to come and protect us, you big, strong m-a-a-a-n?" she snapped in reply. "You think we're helpless just because – "

This was unproductive. "I'd appreciate it if they did walk with us," I interrupted. "I know you're not afraid of anything, Rachel, but I guess I am." That wasn't a lie; a small, not very strong black girl had a lot to be afraid of. Sexist or not, the fact was that we were in a lot less danger walking with three boys than we were alone. I didn't think any of us would do well in an actual fight, but a group of us were much better at avoiding one.

Rachel had no real way of objecting to that. We left, silently. Rachel, Jake, Marco, Tobias and me. At that moment, the scariest things in my life were bad grades and bullies.

Life was about to get a whole lot scarier.


	2. Chapter 2

Between the mall and the bus stop we needed was a large construction site. We'd all been told to avoid the construction site, and with good reason; it was poorly lit, had no roads through it, and it was the perfect place for all sorts of criminal activity. The safe, sensible thing to do was to walk around the site, using the carefully-lit roads that lengthened the journey by a quarter.

We're safe, sensible kids, so we were careful not to cut ourselves on the wire as we snuck through a hole in the fence to cut through the construction site.

"Um," I said, eyeing the piece of fence that Rachel was holding up for me. "Are we sure we don't want to go around?"

"As opposed to moving through the creepy abandoned lot full of dark corners and potential axe murderers?" Marco muttered. "What could possibly go wrong?" But Rachel was already on the other side of the wire, raising her brow at him, and Tobias showed no hesitation in sliding through, so he shrugged and followed.

"Don't worry," Jake told me with a smile. "It'll be fine."

I nodded and scrambled under the wire.

The site is a big area, surrounded on two sides by trees, with the highway separating it from the mall area. There's a broad, open field between the construction site and the nearest houses. It's a very isolated place. Originally it was supposed to be a new shopping center. Apparently somebody had thought that building a big shopping center very close to an existing mall was a good idea, but their boss must have had more sense because the project was now abandoned. Now it was just all these half-finished buildings that make it look like a ghost town. There were huge piles of rusted steel beams; pyramids of giant concrete pipes; little mountains of dirt; and deep pits that had filled up with black, muddy water. And it was completely deserted. Odd. It seemed like the perfect place for homeless people to sleep.

Tobias couldn't have been half as nervous about the place as I was, because instead of peering into dark corners for axe murderers, he was gazing at the sky as we walked. I knew this because he stopped and pointed upward. "Look."

"What?" Jake sounded distracted.

"Just look."

A blue-white light, brighter than a star and faster than an aeroplane, scooted across the sky. A shooting star? Nice. It started to slow down.

Shooting stars did not slow down like that.

Normally, an object that moved oddly against the sky was a satellite in Earth orbit (or at least that was what my dad always used to tell me when I looked for UFOs as a little kid). But satellites didn't move like that either, and they weren't nearly so bright.

"What is it?" Jake asked.

"I don't know." Tobias again.

It didn't move like anything in orbit. It wasn't a shooting star. It definitely wasn't an aeroplane.

"It's a flying saucer." I hadn't realised I'd spoken aloud until I saw the odd looks the others were giving me.

"A flying saucer?" Marco; incredulous, a little mocking.

"It's coming this way," Rachel said.

"Hard to be sure," Jake replied.

"No," Rachel insisted, "It's coming this way."

I opened my mouth to clarify my position – that it was a normal phenomenon unknown to us, possibly a military aircraft test or possibly some sort of scientific test, that commonly resulted in such stories – but the object was close enough to see now. It was, indeed, coming our way.

"Not exactly a flying saucer," Jake said. Was he trying to make light of the situation? Was he trying to sound composed? He wasn't succeeding. He was, however, right – it was no saucer. The flying object was about the size of a school bus. The whole thing looked like some sort of legless, mutant scorpion with a long, needle-ended tail curled above its straight shaft of a body. There were stubby little... wings, I suppose... on either side of the "body", with tubes at the end, each glowing blue. Engines, had to be. The "head" end was some sort of egg-shaped pod, looking weirdly gentle under the clearly weaponised "tail".

Not like a scorpion at all. More like some kind of scorpion-tailed science fiction dragon.

I knew this mental wandering was simply me avoiding the main issue, that this... thing was simply too big, too world-shattering to think about. But I couldn't do that. I couldn't afford to do that. I pulled my thoughts back to the actual matter at hand.

The thing was not very aerodynamic.

The thing was of sufficient size to carry several humans. (Or other human-sized organisms, I reluctantly corrected myself.)

The thing was using technology I had never seen or heard of, and that could not be extrapolated from what I had seen or heard of.

The thing was coming down right in the middle of our town.

Some sort of publicity stunt? Unlikely, in an abandoned construction site at night. Secret military vehicle? That would explain why the construction site was completely deserted, but it made no logical sense to land a top secret military vehicle in a town where anybody outside the site could see it with binoculars. There are military bases for that sort of thing. Aliens. Still seemed like silly behaviour, but there was no reason that aliens would behave like humans did.

"It's stopping," Rachel said. There was disbelief in her voice, and fear.

"I think it sees us," Marco said. "Should we run? Maybe we should run home and get a camera. Do you know how much money we could get for a video of a real UFO?"

"If we run, they might… I don't know, zap us with phasers on full power," Jake said.

"Phasers are only on Star Trek," Marco replied with absolutely no evidence to back up that position.

The ship stopped and hovered almost directly over our heads, maybe a hundred feet in the air. I could feel the hair on my head standing on end, although I wear it so short it probably made no visible difference. I could see everyone else's hair standing up, though.

"What do you think it is?" Marco asked. He sounded a little shakier, not so laid-back now that the thing was so close. I was scared, too. Scared and excited. I could feel my heart thundering, my legs threatened to give way beneath me, because even though I knew I shouldn't let my emotions or hopes cloud my reasoning the answer to Marco's question was _so obvious_ to all of us including him.

"I think it's going to land," Tobias exclaimed, grinning like a maniac. He didn't look frightened at all, just really, really excited. Science fiction nerd, probably.

"It's coming right at us!" Jake cried.

I fought the urge to run. I think we all did, except maybe Tobias. But I didn't know if I wanted to run away or run towards the ship. I didn't even have real proof yet and I knew I was going to look like an idiot if it opened up and a director somewhere yelled "Cut! Those kids shouldn't be in the shot!", but already, the parts of my mind that were afraid of a huge discovery rocking everything I knew about the world, and those that were excited about it, were warring for my attention.

Tobias was right; it slowed, then stopped, almost directly above us. It was so close that I could see the burn marks on the surface. I could see the melted portions of the pod section. The blue lights of the engines were flickering a little. The ship landed, and the blue lights went out instantly.

"It isn't very big, is it?" Rachel whispered.

"It's about three or four times as big as our minivan," Jake replied. Reverent, afraid. The vehicle looked delicate on the ground. Hurt.

"We should tell someone," Marco said. "I mean, this is kind of major, you know? Spaceships don't just land in the construction site every day. We should call the cops or the army or the president or something. We'd be totally famous. We'd get to be on Letterman for sure."

Sometimes I think Marco is an idiot. "Do you really think – "

But Tobias was already stepping forward, hands raised and open. I hoped whatever was in there recognised a human peace signal. It'd be just our luck that it was some sort of alien with poison needles in their palms or something, and Tobias was giving them the most aggressive gesture in their body language. We'd be killed by a communication error. "It's safe," Tobias said in a loud, clear voice. "We won't hurt you."

"Do you think they speak English?" Jake asked.

"Everyone speaks English on Star Trek," I said, trying to lighten the mood. I wasn't sure myself. We'd been broadcasting signals into space for quite a while, but who was to say anybody had bothered decoding them? Spaceships probably didn't even come by Earth all that often, or we'd have noticed.

Tobias tried again. "Please come out. We won't hurt you."

[I know.]

I froze. Point one: they understood English. Point two: I was pretty sure that reply had been telepathic. Maybe I was just distracted or something, but I didn't remember hearing any sounds. Just the translated words, in my head.

I traded a glance with Jake. He'd not-heard it, too. Okay.

"Did everyone hear that?" Tobias whispered.

We all nodded at once, very slowly.

"Can you come out?" Tobias asked in his loud, talking-to-aliens voice.

[Yes. Do not be frightened.] An impossible request.

"We won't be frightened," Tobias said.

"Speak for yourself," Jake muttered. I giggled nervously.

A thin arc of light appeared, a circular doorway, opening slowly in the smooth side of the pod part of the ship. With the engines extinguished, it was far brighter than anything else in the lot. I shielded my eyes and willed them to adapt to the light faster, wanting to see everything.

Then the alien appeared in the doorway, silhouetted against the bright interior lighting.

My first thought was _It's hurt_. You could see it in the way it stood slightly unsteady on its four horselike legs. It looked like a centaur, one of its thin, weak-looking arms stretched back to comfort its right flank. From the top of its head stretched two stalks. Eyestalks?

My second thought was,_ This is very, very strange_.

It stumbled out of the ship with an odd light-footed grace that belied its injury. Not horselike, I realised; deerlike. No longer silhouetted in the doorway, I could see more detail. It was covered in blue fur, slightly longer on the deer part of its body. It did indeed have eyes on the stalks sprouting from the top of its head, eyes that scanned the area independent of each other. It also had two larger eyes on its head, in about the same position as ours. Those eyes were focused on us.

It had no mouth, no jaw so far as I could tell. Most of its face was taken up by two enormous vertical slits. Nostrils, I presumed; the movement of its flanks suggested that it breathed. Fortunately, it was having no trouble breathing our atmosphere. Yet.

And it had a tail.

How had the tail not been the first thing I noticed? Even though it was clearly being held in a nonthreatening way, it was alarming; a length of thick, flexible muscle tipped by a blade. Some kind of horn, probably, or tooth. (Why was I trying to apply the body tissues of Earth animals to something not from Earth anyway? Habit, probably.) It was shaped like a scythe, and it looked very, very sharp. I wondered, idly, whether it was sharpened manually, or kept an edge naturally.

"Hello," Tobias said, wisely keeping his voice gentle. I was glad I wasn't doing the talking. Mentally, I was freaking out. This was an alien and it was here talking to us, there was life on other planets and I just wanted to break down and cry in gratitude to the universe and...

[Hello,] the alien said, in that disconcerting mental voice.

Then it staggered. Tobias tried to catch it, but it slipped from his grasp and fell to the ground. Only then did I realise it had angled itself so that we could only see the left side of its body. Only then did I realise just how badly it was hurt.

"Look!" I said, pointing out the angry burn that had destroyed the flesh along its right flank. "It's hurt."

[Yes. I am dying.]

Somebody was going on about ambulances, but I ignored them. My parents are veterinarians. We run a wildlife clinic in our barn. I'd treated a lot of wounds before, although admittedly not severe burns on a blue alien centaur. "We can bandage that wound. Jake, give me your shirt. We can tear it up and make bandages," I added at Rachel's confused look.

[No. I will die. The wound is fatal.]

"NO!" Jake said, as if he could prevent that happening by sheer force of will. "You can't die. You're the first alien ever to come to Earth. You can't die."

"We won't let that happen," Rachel added firmly.

[I am not the first. There are many, many others.]

"Other aliens? Like you?" Tobias demanded.

The alien shook his big head slowly, side to side. [Not like me.]

Then he cried out in pain, a silent sound that echoed horribly inside my mind. I felt sick. For a moment, I had actually felt him dying.

[Not like me,] he repeated. [They are different.]

"Different? How?" Jake asked.

The alien narrowed his eyes; whether in emphasis or pain, I couldn't tell. [They have come to destroy you.]


	3. Chapter 3

An alien invasion. Brilliant.

That was too big,_ too big_, to properly appreciate right then. I took a deep breath, tried to steady my heart. Get the information while we could. Figure out what it means later.

[They are called yeerks. They are different from us. Different from you, as well.]

"Are you telling us they're already here on Earth?" Rachel demanded.

[Many are here. Hundreds. Maybe more.]

"Why hasn't anybody noticed them?" Marco asked. "I think someone would have mentioned it at school."

[You do not understand. Yeerks are different. They have no body, like yours or mine. They live in the bodies of other species. They are... ]

It closed its eyes and seemed to focus. An image popped into my head, one I hadn't put there. I saw a grey-green slug, large enough to be a rat; automatically, I memorised it as best I could. It wasn't anything like a mammal. And it wasn't anything like the alien before us.

"I'm guessing that was a yeerk," Marco said. "Either that or a very big wad of slimy chewing gum."

[They are almost powerless without hosts. They - ]

My knees gave out under the sudden wave of pain and sadness. I guessed the pain was pretty constant for the alien, and it was making an effort to shield us from it until the new wave took it by surprise. But it subsided from our minds if not from the alien's, and it continued.

[The yeerks are parasites. They must have a host to live in. In this form they are known as Controllers. They enter the brain and are absorbed into it, taking over the host's memories, thoughts and feelings. They can control their bodies. They try to get the host to accept them voluntarily. It is easier that way. Otherwise the host may be able to resist, at least a little.]

"Are you saying they take over human beings?" Rachel asked. "People? These things take over their bodies?"

"Look, this is serious stuff," Jake said. "You shouldn't be telling us. We're just kids, you know. This is like something the government should know about."

[We had hoped to stop them,] the alien continued. [Swarms of their Bug fighters were waiting when our Dome ship came out of Z-Space. We knew of their mother ship and were ready for the Bug fighters, but the yeerks surprised us - they had hidden a powerful Blade ship in a crater of your moon. We fought, but... we lost. They have tracked me here. They will be here soon to eliminate all traces of me and my ship.]

I asked the obvious question. "How can they do that?"

The alien smiled with its eyes. [Their Dracon beams will leave nothing behind but a few molecules of this ship, and... this body. I sent a message to my home world. We andalites fight the yeerks wherever they go throughout the universe. My people will send help, but it may take a year, even more, and by then the yeerks will have control of this planet. After that, there is no hope. You must tell people. You must warn your people!]

Another spasm of pain ripped through it. Its time was nearly up.

"No one is ever going to believe us," Marco said hopelessly. He looked at me and shook his head. "No way." He was completely right, of course.

"I don't care if he thinks he's going to die, we have to try and help him," Rachel said. "We can get him to a hospital. Or maybe Cassie's parents... "

[There is no time. No time,] the andalite said. Then his eyes brightened. [Perhaps... ]

"What?"

[Go into my ship. You will see a small blue box, very plain. Bring it to me. Quickly! I have very little time, and the yeerks will find me soon.]

We all looked at each other. Who was going to be the one to go inside the ship? I was insanely curious, but I wasn't about to leave the alien. Somehow, we all ended up looking at Jake.

"Go ahead," Tobias said. "I want to stay with him." He knelt beside the andalite and placed a comforting hand on the alien's narrow shoulder.

Jake glanced uncertainly between me and the spaceship. Did he want me to go? "Go ahead," I said encouragingly. "You're not scared." I could quiz him on what he saw later.

He disappeared inside the ship. I watched Tobias crouching on the ground, one hand around the alien's shoulders, murmuring comfortingly as I would to an injured fox or eagle. The alien's breathing was laboured, its central eyes half-closed as it rested its head on Tobias' shoulder. Its eyes on stalks still scanned the sky. I glanced up but saw nothing.

Jake returned and handed over a small blue box.

[Thank you.]

"I, um... was that your family?" Jake asked. "That picture?"

[Yes.]

"I'm real sorry."

[There is something I may be able to do to help you fight the yeerks.]

"What?" Rachel demanded.

[I know that you are young. I know that you have no power with which to resist the Controllers. But I may be able to give you some small powers that may help.]

We all looked at each other. All except Tobias, who never took his gaze off the alien.

[If you wish, I can give you powers that no other human being has ever had.]

"Powers?" Jake asked.

[It is a piece of andalite technology that the yeerks do not have,] the andalite explained. [A technology that enables us to pass unnoticed in many parts of the universe - the power to morph. We have never shared this power. But your need is great.]

"Morph? Morph how?" Rachel asked, her eyes narrowed.

[To change your bodies,] the andalite said. [To become any other species. Any animal.]

Marco laughed derisively. "Become animals?"

In my mind, _That's the greatest thing I've ever heard_ warred with _That is utterly impossible_. I banished both thoughts. They weren't useful right now, time was short, and there would be time to freak out later.

[You will only need to touch a creature, to acquire its DNA pattern, and you will be able to become that creature. It requires concentration and determination, but, if you are strong, you can do it. There are... limitations. Problems. Dangers, even. But there is no time to explain it all... no time. You will have to learn for yourselves. But first, do you wish to receive this power?]

"He's kidding, right?" Marco asked.

"No," Tobias said softly. "He's not kidding."

We didn't have time to sit around arguing over the truth of something that could be tested soon enough. "I'll do it," I said.

"I think we should decide together," Jake said, "one way or another."

I didn't think that was necessary, but didn't say so. We'd spent far too much time arguing already.

"What's that?" Rachel asked. She was looking up at two tiny red pinpricks of light in the sky. Was it my imagination, or were they coming closer?

The andalite's mental voice dripped with hatred. [Yeerks.]


	4. Chapter 4

[Yeerks!]

The twin red lights slowed. They turned in a circle and came back toward us.

[There is no more time. You must decide!]

"We have to do this," Tobias said. "How else can we fight these Controllers?"

"This is so insane!" Marco said. "Insane."

"I'd like more time, but we don't have that choice," Rachel said. "I'm for it."

"What do you say, Jake?" I asked. He hesitated, glanced around at us, glanced up. Why was he hesitating? Surely he could already see that "no" was outvoted?

"We have to," Tobias said urgently.

Finally, Jake nodded.

[Then each of you, press your hand against one of the sides of the cube.]

We did. Five hands, each pressed against one side. Then a sixth hand, smaller and blue. With two more fingers than ours, I noticed.

[Do not be afraid,] the andalite said.

Something like a shock, only pleasurable, seemed to run through me. A tingle that almost made me laugh. I wished he could've given us telepathy to fight with. It seemed useful.

[Go now,] the andalite said. [Only remember this - never remain in animal form for more than two of your Earth hours. Never! That is the greatest danger of the morphing! If you stay longer than two hours you will be trapped, unable to return to human form.]

Two hours. I made a mental note.

Suddenly some new fear washed through me. Fear from the andalite's mind. He was staring up at the sky with his main eyes. The two red pricks of light were close enough to be seen as ships now. (What had the andalite called them? Bug fighters?) And there was something else up there.

[Visser Three! He comes.]

The andalite's fear on top of my own was nearly unmanageable. I heard the same fear in Jake's voice as he asked "What's a Visser? Who's a Visser?"

[Go now. Run! Visser Three is here. He is the most deadly of your enemies. Of all yeerks he alone has the power to morph, the same power you now have. Run!]

I was already running, but stopped when I realised that my friends weren't behind me.

"No, we'll stay with you," Rachel said firmly. "Maybe we can help."

[No. You must save yourselves. Save yourselves and save your planet! The yeerks are here.]

The ships were coming closer. Much closer. If we didn't move very soon, they'd see us.

"But how are we supposed to fight these... these Controllers?" Rachel demanded.

[You must find a way. Now run!]

Jake echoed the command. "He's right. Run!"

We ran. All but Tobias, who knelt beside the andalite and took his hand. The andalite pressed his other hand against Tobias's head. Tobias rocked back, like he'd been shocked. Then he, too, was up and running, stumbling over the loose junk and potholes of the construction site.

I don't run.

It's not that I'm really, really unfit. I'm average for a bookworm. Maybe a bit better, since I work with animals and stuff so much. But I am a bookworm. Running across the uneven ground of a construction site, strewn with bits of glass and concrete, in the dark, away from evil aliens, was a challenge. Normally, the most exercise I get is carrying birdcages and gently restraining injured woodland creatures. By the time we were sheltered behind a low piece of half-destroyed wall, I was gasping and praying that my breath couldn't be heard over the landing ships. Rachel pulled out a makeup compact and we carefully crowded around to use the mirror to peek over the wall.

The two Bug fighters were larger than the andalite ship, and did indeed look like bugs. Like cockroaches. Cockroaches without legs or wings. The "head" sported two large windows that looked like an insect's eyes, and there were two long, serrated spears held like mandibles. Weaponised, I assumed; it was far too delicate a place to put vital systems. Or maybe it was docking rigging. Not important right now. They'd switched powerful spotlights on, illuminating the andalite ship and barely conscious andalite crouched in front of it.

They had touched down on either side of the andalite ship. Next to me I heard Marco breathe, "Okay, you can wake me up now. I've had enough of this dream."

The larger ship...

The larger ship waited for the bug fighters to land before descending. It looked sort of like a two-headed axe. The "handle" was a long shaft, longer and thinner than the middle of the andalite's ship, ending in a point at the front instead of a large pod. The back half sported two blade-shaped "wings". It must've been ten times the size of the andalite's ship, which was probably a disadvantage in a space battle, but it certainly looked intimidating as it descended slowly, beams of light vaporising anything in its path to create a landing spot. That was going to look suspicious in the morning. (Or maybe not. The only people who would know the abandoned construction site all that well were homeless people; who would listen to them?) Before our eyes, a half-constructed building evaporated, leaving scorched, pitted ground. Had the ship descended on the other site of the andalite's ship, that would've been our little wall vanishing... and us. I could feel my own heart pounding through my spine, my ragged breath tearing through my throat. The undercurrent of andalite fear still leaking into my mind was as impossible to calm as my own, rather more unmanageable fear; together they made it hard to think straight. Something primal took control, and I started to scream. Jake clamped a hand over my mouth. I shot him a grateful look.

Big, red-lit, vicious-looking ships surrounding the gentle andalite ship and its helpless, dying pilot. Was the colour-coding and aesthetics common in each society, or was I getting a false impression due to a very small sample size? It didn't matter. I reminded myself that the yeerks weren't bad because their technology looked scary to humans. The yeerks were bad because they were hostile, mind-controlling invaders. The door on the Blade ship was opening, and more aliens walked out.

Each looked like a walking armoury. They weren't armed; they weren't even clothed. But they were covered in what looked like natural blades. Their long legs looked birdlike in structure, but muscular. Like a... like a two-legged dinosaur, perhaps. There were curved, hornlike blades jutting from their knees. Their arms looked humanlike, but much longer, with claws instead of hands. Their elbows and wrists also sported blades, as did the ends of their long, tyrannosaurus rex-style tails. Their heads were like a snapping turtle but with a large, pronounced beak. Above their eyes were three straight, dagger-like horns, jutting forward. It occurred to me how futile it was to try to frame all these aliens in terms of Earth animals.

[Hork-bajir-Controllers.] The andalite's voice was very faint. That couldn't be good. [The hork-bajir are a good people, despite their fearsome looks. But they have been enslaved by the yeerks. Each of them now carries a yeerk in his head. They are to be pitied.]

"Pity. Right," Rachel said grimly. "They're walking killing machines. Look at them!"

The hork-bajir were followed by another, distinctly different kind of alien. How many different aliens were we going to meet in one day?

How many alien species had the yeerks enslaved?

[Taxxon-controllers. The taxxons are evil.]

I squinted at Rachel's tiny mirror. The taxxons were big, bloated things that looked like pale, bald caterpillars. Last year, my parents had taken me to a human biology exhibit, and we'd walked through a giant plastic inflatable model of the human colon that compared normal colon to various types of colon cancer. The taxxons looked like that, inside out; big, inflated bouncy-castle tubes. Or giant, legged worms. (I was doing the Earth animal comparison thing again; I had no other frame of reference.) They looked about twelve feet long and about as wide as a car. The back two-thirds of their bodies were supported by dozens of tiny legs that moved with surprising grace. The front third was held upright, with limbs that were clawed. Some of their claws held weapons, guns shaped for taxxon hands. They were pointed at the andalite. Their... faces, I suppose... were just a giant, saw-toothed ring of a mouth surrounded by four huge, red, gelatinous eyes. Only their limbs gave them any sort of dorsal orientation. They formed a ring around the andalite and its ship; Rachel adjusted her mirror, trying to keep the andalite in view without flashing any stray light at the Controllers.

Then, one of the hork-bajir leapt toward us.


	5. Chapter 5

_Don't breathe don't move don't breathe don't move..._

The hork-bajir landed on the short wall above us and we all pressed our bodies into the wall as if we could will it to swallow us. Nobody breathed. Nobody moved. Rachel's mirror was hugged to her chest as the hork-bajir turned its head this way and that, squinting in the gloom.

_Please please please don't have an excellent sense of smell..._

[Silence!] the andalite warned us. [Hork-bajir do not see well in darkness, but their hearing is very good.]

I stuck my tongue between my teeth to prevent any chatter and hoped that the hork-bajir wouldn't recognise the form of a human kid, that our shapes and shadows would blend in with the random debris. I reflected, distantly, on how experiencing exactly this sort of thing over many generations, winning some and losing some, lead to the near-perfect camouflage so many insects have. Thinking about biology always helps me calm down.

Almost always. Nothing was helping me stay calm in the face of a giant bladed alien who, if they got the slightest hint that any of us were there, would chop us into tiny pieces.

[Courage, my friends.]

A calm warmth spread through my body like a hug. Like a mother telling her toddler that everything was going to be okay. The part of my brain still frantically trying to concentrate on biology was wondering exactly what the effect was – was it purely mental, an illusion, or had the andalite stimulated our own endocrine glands somehow? How well did emotions translate across species? The rest of me was able to relax, very slightly, while carefully not moving. The panic was there, but it was under a blanket.

I felt a wave of respect for the terrified, weakened, dying alien that had somehow found enough strength to spare for us.

The hork-bajir moved away. After a few moments, ignoring the "Are you crazy?!" looks Marco was shooting at her, Rachel angled her mirror to watch the scene once more. The Controllers had all turned to look at the Blade ship. They seemed to be standing to attention. A new figure was silhouetted in the doorway.

[Visser Three,] the andalite warrior told us, his voice fading even further.

Visser Three was an andalite.

The andalite warrior spoke over Rachel's sputtering confusion. [ There is only one andalite-Controller. Visser Three.]

Visser Three strode toward the wounded andalite. Physically, it was hard to tell them apart. But the Visser moved with a sort of barely-disguised malevolence, as if everything around him was a potential target and existed only so long as he found it amusing.

_Either andalite and human body language is very similar, or you're projecting_, the biology part of my brain noted.

[Well, well,] Visser Three said.

Yep. Malevolence. And gloating. Of course there would be gloating.

"Can he hear our thoughts?" I whispered.

"If he can we're so dead I don't even want to think about it," Rachel replied.

There was no way the andalite had heard us; if it could, so could the yeerks, and we'd be dead. But it seemed to anticipate the question. [Thoughtspeak needs to be directed, and humans cannot do it,] the andalite said. [You hear his thoughts because he is broadcasting them for all to hear. This is a great victory for him.]

[What have we here? A meddling andalite?] Visser Three looked more closely at the andalite's ship. [Ah, but no ordinary andalite warrior. Prince Elfangor-Sirinial-Shamtul, if I am not mistaken. How many of our fighters have you shredded? Seven, or was it eight by the time the battle ended?]

The andalite didn't answer. (_Male, royalty_, my brain noted. _Probable political importance, unless "prince" is an abstraction for a word English doesn't have_.)

[The very last andalite in this sector of space. Yes, I'm afraid your Dome ship has been completely destroyed. Completely. I watched it burn as it fell into the atmosphere of this little world.]

[There will be others,] the andalite prince said, but I could hear the pain and worry in his mental voice.

The Visser took a step closer to the andalite. [Yes, and when they come it will be too late. This world will be mine. My own contribution to the yeerk Empire, our greatest conquest. And then I'll be Visser One.]

[What do you want with these humans?] Prince Elfangor-Sirinial-Shamtul asked. [You have your taxxon allies. You have your hork-bajir slaves. And other slaves from other worlds. Why these people?] Was he pleading on our behalf? He was definitely pleading on our behalf.

[Because there are so many, and they are so weak,] Visser Three sneered. [Billions of bodies! And they have no idea what's happening. With this many hosts we can spread throughout the universe, unstoppable! Billions of us. Face it, andalite, you have fought well and bravely. But you have lost.]

No, he hadn't been pleading; he knew all this. He was getting Visser Three to tell us.

Visser Three stepped right up to Elfangor. I could feel Elfangor's fear, but rather than cower, he fought the pain of his wound and climbed to his feet. He knew he was going to die. He wanted to die on his feet, looking his enemy in the face.

But Visser Three was not done taunting his foe. [I promise you one thing, Prince Elfangor - when we have this planet, with its rich harvest of bodies, we will move against the andalite home world. I will personally hunt down your family. And I will personally oversee the placement of my most faithful lieutenants in their heads. I hope that they will resist, so I can hear their minds scream.]

Elfangor struck!

His tail whipped up and over, faster than the eye could track even if we weren't watching the scene through a tiny hand mirror. The Visser twisted his head aside. The andalite's tail blade sliced into his shoulder, and blood (was it blood if it was from an alien?) gushed from the wound.

"Yes!" Jake hissed next to me, as Visser Three's scream of pain tore through my head. I gritted my own teeth against an answering scream. _Another use for telepathy; disorienting foes._

A blue beam shot from the needle-like tail of the andalite's ship and into a Bug fighter. A wave of heat washed over us, even through the protection of the wall, as the Bug fighter disappeared. Controllers scattered.

[Fire!] Visser Three yelled. [Burn his ship!]

The andalite ship glowed and disintegrated. Slower, I thought, than the Bug fighter, but in my emotional state it was impossible to be too sure of that.

"There are people over there," Jake said.

I squinted, but couldn't see anything.

"Are they prisoners?" Marco asked.

[Take the andalite. Hold him for me.]

Three hork-bajir leapt forward to hold down Elfangor, who didn't resist. Visser Three stood still for a few seconds, apparently focusing. Then he began to change shape. What had the andalite called it? Morphing. He began to morph.

I was really, really hoping he wouldn't be able to do that.


	6. Chapter 6

Visser Three's skin bubbled and shifted, betraying bone movements that seemed very unnatural. Things shrank, grew, slid about. His andalite head grew large. Larger. Much larger. My whole body, head to toe, was smaller than that head. The four deerlike legs merged into two and then expanded, each leg becoming as big around as a redwood tree. The delicate andalite arms lengthened, their bones seeming to just melt away, and became tentacles. In the hideously bloated head, a mouth appeared. It was filled with teeth as long as your arm.

The mouth grew wider and wider, becoming a monstrous, terrifying grin.

There was nothing noticeably andalite left in Visser Three's form.

"R-r-r-r-a-a-a-w-w-w-w-g-g-g!" The roar of the beast Visser Three had become made the ground shake.

Somebody was whimpering.

Somebody else was muttering. "No no no no no..." It was me, I realised. That muttering was me.

"Don't look," Rachel said, putting one arm around me, her other hand reaching for Tobias. But I couldn't not look. I had to look as, without telepathy, without anything but the sheer force of her presence, Rachel leant us her strength.

Visser Three lifted Elfangor out of the grip of the hork-bajir, who had the sense to let go and duck away. Elfangor lashed out with his tail, striking the Visser again and again, but to no effect. Visser Three dangled Elfangor over his huge, gaping mouth.

"You filthy – " Jake was reaching for a piece or iron pipe and starting to climb the low wall.

[No!] Elfangor's command made him hesitate long enough for Marco to drag him back down; he and Tobias held him against the ground while Rachel covered his mouth.

"You idiot!" Marco hissed. "You'll get us all killed!"

He was right. "He doesn't _want_ you to die for him," I added. "There is nothing you can do! We can't save him. Don't make it pointless."

Jake glared and shoved the boys off him. He didn't look ready to go trying beat up a horde of monsters with a pipe, so they let him.

Rachel got out her mirror again in time for us to see Prince Elfangor-Sirinial-Shamtul drop into Visser Three's mouth.

His last cry of pain and despair ripped through us all. I could see Tobias shudder. I'd seen death and heard final screams before. I worked with sick animals' it came with the job. But I'd never felt them in my mind from a fellow sentient being. Tears were streaming down my face, down all our faces.

I would never forget that cry.

The hork-bajir-Controllers were making some kind of huffing sound. Laughter? Dogs laughed with a huffing sound. _Stop comparing aliens to animals, there's no way it can be accurate._ I'd barely thought it when actual laugher – human laugher – erupted.

Jake had been right. There _were_ human-Controllers there.

I felt sick.

Visser Three morphed back to his andalite body. [Ah, nothing like a good Antarean Bogg morph for... taking a bite out of your enemies.]

Again the human-Controllers laughed and the hork-bajir-Controllers huffed.

Marco started throwing up. I felt like joining him. But somehow that sound caught the attention of the nearest hork-bajir. Its head turned toward us. It was perfectly still.

We were perfectly still.

_Don't move don't breathe don't move don't breathe..._

The hork-bajir turned toward us. _Could it see the little mirror?!_

I don't think anybody made the decision to run. We were just, suddenly, running.

I swore to get a gym membership. Or start jogging. Or something.

A cry went up from the hork-bajir.

"Split up," Jake yelled. "They can't follow all of us."

A sensible, if utterly terrifying, plan. I took off. Rachel and Jake shouted behind me, waved, seemed to be trying to draw pursuit. They were the fastest among us; another sensible (if terrifying) move.

I ran.

It felt wrong to do it. It felt wrong to abandon them. But that was my emotions playing tricks on me. It was easier to hide separately. It was easier to flee separately. Splitting the pursuing forces was the only hope we had, and in my physical shape hanging around would just endanger everyone else.

So I ran.

I ran through a half-collapsed building. I ran behind a wall. I stopped, gasping, behind a pile of rubble, and desperately burrowed under the fence. I walked very briskly to the bus stop, hesitated, and walked two bus stops further. I took a bus home.

I have a very good memory. It's not often I find myself cursing that.

Elfangor, dropping between monstrous jaws. The hork-bajir, coming toward us. Me, abandoning my best friend and my... Jake... to run, to save myself, and would they get home, would they be okay?

_[Courage, friends.]_ I was pretty sure I could remember that feeling too, if I tried.


	7. Chapter 7

I live on a farm. Well, it used to be a farm, but we don't farm anything. We have some horses and a cow. Our barn is the Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre which is, as I said earlier, run by my dad. It's not too far out of town, but far enough for the bus trip to be annoying. My mother's also a vet, but works at The Gardens, a local zoo and amusement park.

As soon as I got home, I said hi to my parents, told them I'd eaten at the mall, and went straight up to my room, where I hid under my duvet.

Ok. Now was the appropriate time to freak out.

I'd just watch somebody get eaten. My friends and I had just been hunted by killers. There were aliens. There were other sentient things in the universe. We were being invaded secretly. There were body-stealers among us. I could turn into animals, probably. I was most likely going to get post-traumatic stress disorder. Elfangor was dead. My friends might be dead.

This wasn't working.

I found a pen and paper and dragged my bedside lamp under the covers. Better.

I wrote the date neatly along the top right-hand corner, a habit I'd picked up off Rachel and her meticulous note-taking.

I wrote, _There is sentient life on other planets_.

I wrote, _Invaders: Yeerks. Body stealers, want to enslave us all. Secret Invasion._

I underlined Secret Invasion twice.

I wrote, _Protectors: Andalites. Oppose yeerks. Fleet will come to protect us, but not yet._

_Anybody could be a Controller._

_The Controllers know they were seen last night._

_Did they see our faces?_

Did they see our faces? If so, we needed to go into hiding. If not, trying to go into hiding could get us all killed.

I wrote _Visser Three killed Prince Elfangor-Sirinial-Shamtul_, a little surprised that I'd remembered the name. I circled _Visser_ and _Prince_. Terms I didn't understand. With an arrow to_ Visser Three, _I wrote _Animal shapeshifter._

I paused.

Elfangor had given us the ability to shapeshift. He had that power. So why didn't he turn into something small and run away?

I wrote, _Why didn't Elfangor flee before Visser Three landed_?

I wrote, _Moral or biological reason that Elfangor couldn't shapeshift_. I wrote, _Didn't want to provoke a chase in a crowded town_. I thought about that, then added, _Public chase would warn humans of invasion, so why not risk it?_

I thought about it, and I couldn't think of a good reason not to flee if Elfangor had the shapeshifting power. Either the yeerks would follow, blowing their cover, or break off the chase, letting him escape. Perhaps it was an honour thing. Perhaps he couldn't shapeshift himself. I shrugged and moved to the next topic.

_Telepathy_, I wrote. No... what had Elfangor called it? _Thought-speak_. After a pause, I crossed out both terms. It was an andalite skill and they weren't on Earth yet. It was fascinating, but there were more immediate things to deal with.

_Shapeshifting._

_Turn into any animal after touching it. _What had Elfangor said? _Acquire its DNA pattern. Two hour limit_. I underlined the limit.

Acquire its DNA pattern?

_Aliens have DNA._

Did it use the same codes as ours? Were their cell walls the same?

_Check that ability works on Earth animals._

But...

_Just DNA?_

There was more to an animal than its DNA. Not everything in a cell's structure was encoded into DNA. Incubation temperature of eggs determined the sex of reptiles, not their DNA. Mitochondria, things inside cells that no animal could live without, weren't build using the cell's DNA, they reproduced by themselves; so did chloroplasts, which allowed plants to photosyn –

_Try on plants, fungi, bacteria._

I thought about that, crossed it out and emphatically wrote _NEVER BECOME ANYTHING WITHOUT A BRAIN._ It'd be really embarrassing to kill myself by turning into a nonthinking carrot.

I could experiment later. I wrote, _Learn more biology_ on one corner of the page, then tore that off and got up to pin it to my little corkboard.

The corkboard was something I'd picked up off Rachel. It wasn't a big thing, just one of those little two-foot noticeboards. She'd cut out and stuck up a bunch of inspiring quotes about life and goodness and happiness, just little rules to live by and inspire her. My board had a few random quotes on it that I liked. _"If you are not more confused by what is false than what is true, you have zero knowledge." "Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so." "You cannot hit a target you cannot see, and you cannot reach a goal you do not have."_ And along the top, in bright, bold rainbow gelpen, _"We have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night"_. I stuck the note to learn more biology in one corner, and went back to bed.

The stars. There was _life_ among the _stars_.

_Focus, Cassie_, I told myself

What else?

I wrote _The others_. Crossed it out. Couldn't call them all, it could be suspicious. Couldn't do anything. No use fretting.

I drew a line down the page from _Yeerks_. What had Elfangor said? _Taxxon allies, hork-bajir slaves_. I added _Human slaves_.

Human voices, laughing, as Visser Three...

I wrote, _I am not very brave._

That, I underlined twice. It's always good to know your strengths. Better to know your weaknesses.

_I need to get better at running_ was added to the bottom of the list, and I started to giggle. Once I'd started, I couldn't stop; I convulsed in humourless giggles, paper tearing in my clenching fist, until I was exhausted, and barely had the strength to turn the lamp off before I drifted off to sleep.


	8. Chapter 8

I dreamed about Elfangor getting eaten.


	9. Chapter 9

I woke up at about 3am. We'd been running from the hork-bajir. I was worried that the others had been killed. Or captured.

Captured!

Hadn't Elfangor said something about yeerks stealing their host's memories?

I turned on the lamp that was still lying beside me and smoothed the piece of paper in my hand. I'd torn it completely out of the book during the night.

If any one of the others was captured, they'd be able to identify all of us.

Rachel and Jake, and maybe Marco, knew where I lived.

As quietly as I could, I got out of bed. I got dressed. I crept outside.

How could I hide from them? An animal, obviously – they knew I could turn into animals, but I had a better chance blending in with any face that wasn't mine.

Small animals. Fast animals. Our barn was full of birds and squirrels and other injured wildlife, I could disappear into the forest, I could...

I could get a handle on how the animal-morphing _worked_ before trying anything reckless.

Would I be able to think, as an animal? Visser Three still knew who he was after he morphed that... thing. But how smart would I be? I'd try a smart animal, first. A mammal, so it wasn't too different from my normal body.

I looked away from the barn, out to the horse paddock. Perfect.

The horses were asleep. Midnight opened one eye to look at me as I laid a hand on her shoulder, but she didn't run away.

"Thanks for the help, Prince Elfangor-Sirinial-Shamtul," I muttered, "but it would've been even more helpful to tell us how to actually use this power."

He'd said 'touch'. He's definitely said we could acquire animal DNA by touching them. How? The blue box, when he'd given us the power, seemed to react to telepathic command. Did I have to... think-command the ability?

Feeling a little silly, I imagined the horse beneath me. I imagined its shape, its... horse-ness flowing into me. I felt a strange surge. Or was that my imagination? Midnight's eye flickered shut again.

_Horse..._

An itching sensation, all over my body. My skin was going... fuzzy. Fur! My shoulders expanded, pushing against the fabric of my clothes. My fingers started melding together, nails spreading into hooves...

Argh! _Cassiecassiecassiethinkofcassie..._

My fingers separated again, with an odd sensation that felt like it should hurt, but didn't. The fur was sucked back into my skin.

Okay. Okay.

That pretty much confirmed the shapeshifting powers.

I really should do this under supervision. Unfortunately, there was nobody to supervise.

I took a deep breath and started to take my clothes off. No sense ruining a perfectly good set of clothes. Shivering a little, I put my hand against Midnight's flank again. _Horse._

I gritted my teeth as my spine changed shape, as my nose elongated, as my knees reversed (_This makes no sense, a horse's knee points the same direction as a human knee, the part most people think is a knee is an ankle_, the biology-obsessed part of my brain protested); as fur grew and ribs expanded. It felt wrong, things were moving that weren't meant to move, but there was still no pain. Eventually, the changes stopped.

I clambered onto my four feet. Horses walk on their tiptoes, and this felt perfectly natural. I couldn't see all that well; I could see a lot more around the sides of my head than I normally could (which was a little disconcerting), but I only really had good depth perception in the center. I wasn't as interested in sights as I normally was, anyway. I was interested in smells.

Wind. Grass.

The horse on the ground next to me was worth little more than a cursory sniff. It smelled like me. I dismissed it. There were some smells from the nearby forest that made me... alert, but not nervous. Not yet. Minor predators, not attacking me. Other horses in the field. Not nervous. Good.

I turned and ran.

The ground under my feet! The wind in my face! I ran further, faster than I ever could before across the wide open paddock, a tiny part of my mind keeping note of the shape of the terrain beneath me so I wouldn't stumble. I met a fence and had an urge to try to jump it. No, it was a little too high; I turned and kept running.

Eventually, I slowed to a trot. Then to a walk. Then I started to wander back to where I'd left my stuff. What was I doing again?

I was staying out of the way in case the body-snatching aliens came for me! What was I doing, running across a field? _Focus_. It seemed that morphing had mental effects. Horse senses, horse instincts, probably. We were going to have to watch out for that.

I turned back into Cassie and got dressed. Clothing, I could see, was going to be an issue. Naked kids running about would attract attention, and we couldn't exactly carry satchels around when we weren't human. But that was a future problem; the most immediate issue was the possibility that some shapeshifting teenagers with mind-control slugs might show up and try to capture me. I could hide in the barn; they'd check the house before the barn, surely, if they came for me.

After some thought, I decided to hide on the barn roof.

I practiced switching the morphing on and off. _Horse. Human. Horse. Human._ I didn't change all the way to horse, not on the roof; I just waited for the first signs. Fur. Ears. Whatever. The morph happened in a different order each time. I couldn't figure out why that would be.

Sometimes, the morph seemed to make sense; fur would thicken, or my nose would lengthen. Sometimes, it didn't; knees turned to ankles, or human ears disappeared before horse ears grew. I kept an eye on the house, switching back and forth. Morphing was a little tiring, but not as tiring as I would've thought. Less tiring than, say, a brisk walk. When I got tired, I waited until I got my breath back. I doubted I'd ever need to morph at the rate I was practising, so energy probably wouldn't be an issue.

_Horse_. My shoulders expanded and I heard my shirt tear. _Human_! I shrank again.

The sun rose.

"Cassie!"

My mother's voice. I felt a jolt of panic. Was she a Controller? Had one of the others been captured, and called, and she was supposed to detain me? Or kill me?

Could I trust my own family?

I was being silly. She wouldn't come after me alone, unarmed. I could run away. I could always run away. She wanted me for a normal, innocent reason.

I climbed down off the roof. "Yes, Mom?"

"Jake's on the phone."

_Jake!_

I dashed inside and grabbed the handset lying on the table. "Jake!"

"Uh, hi, Cassie."

"How are you? How is everyone?"

"Fine. I'm fine. Tobias is here with me. I haven't called the others yet. Look, we should meet up. Can you come over – "

"No, let's meet here."

"You sure?"

I couldn't entirely trust Jake. I wasn't about to walk into an ambush. "Yes. It's less crowded with people here and more crowded with animals, if you know what I mean."

"Gotcha. I'll let you know how everyone is after I check in with them."


	10. Chapter 10

We set a time. 10am. A few minutes later, Jake called back to let me know that everyone was okay. I breathed a sigh of relief even as I reminded myself that "okay" meant "not dead", it didn't mean "not captured".

But they hadn't come for me in the night. So if they were going to come for me, it probably wouldn't be until our meeting. I went back to bed, while my mother went outside to force-feed probiotics to a badger.

Rachel arrived at nine.

She and Jake, playing distractions as they had, were who I considered the highest risk of capture. But she smiled, and hugged me, and I couldn't help sobbing a little into her shirt.

"It's ok, it's ok," she murmured, even though it really wasn't. We went out to the barn.

"You tried it yet?" I asked eventually.

"Tried what?"

"Changing into an animal. Morphing."

Her eyes widened. "No. We don't have any pets." She glanced contemplatively around the barn. "Have you?"

I raised an eyebrow.

"Which one?"

"Horse."

"Show me."

Was it her? Was it an alien in her brain, waiting until I was a mess of limbless flesh to attack me? There was no way I could refuse. I started to get undressed. _Horse._

_Let's try to do this without tearing anything, ok?_

Fur started spurting along my body. My fingers started to meld _no, no I need those_, they stopped and I kept undoing the buttons on my shirt. My feet started to change; I kicked my boots off before they were shredded. My spine itched, _no, not yet, I'll fall over_; I felt my tail shoot from the end of my tailbone just as I got my pants off. Then my spine adjusted, I fell forward onto hands that were merging into hooves, and I grew.

I was almost done before I realised that I'd controlled the morph. Not completely, but I'd chosen, broadly, which parts to do first and last.

Rachel was staring at me, mouth open. The probiotic badger was making a ruckus in his cage. Some of the birds were screeching. Not taking her eyes off me, Rachel asked, "Won't your parents come because of the noise?"

[No, things disturb the animals all the time, they'll ignore it unless it gets really bad.]

Rachel's eyes widened and she started looking around, startled.

[Uhm. You can hear me, can't you.]

She nodded, slowly. "Can you hear me?"

[Yes, of course.]

"Did you hear what I thought, I mean."

[Oh. No. Maybe you have to be in morph to do it.]

She nodded. I morphed back and got dressed. "You should try it."

"I, um, I wouldn't know what to turn into."

"We have a barn full of animals. Pick one."

"Maybe later." Was Rachel scared? Rachel was never scared. Not of anything. She'd held my hand while we watched a warrior get eaten alive, but she was scared of turning into an animal? I didn't press the issue.

She got out a newspaper, opened it to a particular page and thrust it at me. "Look at this."

It was obvious which article she meant. It was a short one, detailing some strange lights and sounds over the construction site. A few people had reported seeing UFOs. The sort of thing I'd normally scoff at. The police clearly felt the same; they'd dismissed it as kids setting off fireworks.

Fireworks had been found at the site.

The police were looking for the kids.

I met Rachel's eyes. "Controllers."

She nodded. "Definitely."

I handed the paper back. "Makes sense. If you were a secretly invading army of body-snatchers, wouldn't you hit the police force first?"

She nodded again. "Police force, media, maybe politicians."

"Military."

"No point. Their footsoldiers are better than ours and so is their technology. Our military aren't relevant unless their invasion stops being so secret. Same for military research; they only need to see that we're not prepared to deal with aliens and our R&D becomes irrelevant to them."

I wished we had pen and paper for this.

Idly, I started half-morphing as we talked. Horse hair. No horse hair. Horse hair. No horse hair. Occasionally my shoulders would widen or my feet would threaten to tear out of my boots, but I managed to stop before breaking anything. Rachel looked away, more content to scan for my parents through the doorway. "They could be our parents, you know. Our friends."

"My parents are just vets. Your mum's a lawyer. She's who we should watch out for."

Rachel shot a glare at me, then shrugged. "We need to watch out for everyone."

"I know." _Even you, Rachel. Are you my friend? Or are you an alien puppetting her body, waiting until we're all here together?_

"So I'm guessing you can't... morph... with clothes?"

"Nope." Once again, I watched horse hair suck itself into my skin. I felt my own hair inch out of my head.

Hair wasn't alive.

Hair strands didn't have DNA.

How did my body "know" how long my hair needed to grow back to? That information wasn't anywhere in any of my cells.

Morphing made no sense.

Mental command... you had to concentrate on what you wanted to be and that new body built itself from your own body...

I sat on a sack of oats in one corner of the barn, closed my eyes, and took several slow, deep breaths.

"What are you doing?" Rachel asked.

"Experimenting. Give me a minute."

My hair had no DNA. Its length wasn't recorded anywhere in my body, except my own memory. But it still, according to the morphing, counted as 'me'. The morphing 'remembered' it.

_I am Cassie. I have bones and organs and muscles and skin and hair. I have underwear. _My jeans and jacket were loose-fitting; I'd never be able to convince my body that they were a part of me, but maybe something skintight...

_Horse._

My face stretched out. Hair sprang across my body. My underwear sank into my skin. I opened my eyes and grinned with my freaky half-horse face at Rachel, who just stared back, puzzled. As far as she could tell, I hadn't done anything different than I'd been doing all along.

"What?" she asked.

I morphed back. "I think we might be able to morph skintight clothing."

She grinned. "Leotard."

"Leotard."


	11. Chapter 11

I was naked, in a blue leotard.

The leotard was a part of me. It was a part of my body. It was very important to remember that. It was as much me as my hair or teeth, it was part of the form that would melt into another form. A horse.

Rachel and I had moved to the horse paddock, where my parents were less likely to disturb us.

_Horse._

I felt my body grow and stretch, threatening to tear the fabric. Dammit. I morphed back. Tried again. Hair grew under the leotard; it didn't merge with my skin. I took a deep breath and morphed back.

_It's a part of you. A part of you. Feel the chill of the wind on your leotard_. (There's a sentence I never expected to use.)

The third time, it worked. The leotard melted into my skin as I grew into a black horse. Rachel clapped.

[Hey, it's a big achievement!]

"Yes, yes, I'm very happy that you've found an easy way to get naked." Rachel glanced at her watch. "It's almost ten."

[Go ahead, I'll join you soon.]

Rachel left.

I ran.

Running like a human is not like running like a horse. Horses can go faster, and further, and as somebody with stubby little legs I'd never noticed how cool that was. I'd ridden horses before, of course, but that's a different experience entirely to having your own feet thunder along the ground. I allowed myself a few minutes before demorphing, happy to note that the leotard appeared around me.

Could I do a jacket? I bet I could do a jacket.

I put my jacket on. I was naked, in a leotard and jacket. The jacket was a part of me. I took a deep breath. _Horse._

Twenty seconds later, I was a horse standing above the shredded remnants of my jacket.

I decided that I should probably get back to the barn. There might be a mind-controlling alien waiting there for me.

I headed back at an easy canter. All four of the others were loitering outside the barn. I slowed to a trot and put the barn between myself and my house. No reason my parents should glance out the window and see anything shocking.

"Cassie and I have been here for a while," Rachel said. "She's really good at this. Look how fast she can do it."

_Human._

My head began to melt into a human face. Rachel was smiling, Jake and Tobias were watching with interest. Marco was staring, stunned, a little afraid I think. When I could, I smiled at them. "Hey, kids."

Marco sat down, hard. Jake was trying to sound casual and fooling nobody. "It's cool, it's just Cassie." I decided to show off.

I remembered Elfangor.

I let my human torso stretch from my horse's neck, but kept the rest of my horse body the way it was. Arms grew from my human shoulders, my face became human, the top half of my leotard began erupting from my skin. For a few seconds – I didn't dare hold it longer because the biology made no sense, I didn't know how many hearts I had or if they could power my body or how the spine could even work – I was a centaur.

"Jeez, Rachel," Jake said. "You're right. Cassie is good."

Suddenly we heard the sound of tires on gravel.

The others spun around. I hid behind them, still half-horse. Down the gravel and dirt road came a single black-and-white car.

"The cops!" Tobias cried.


	12. Chapter 12

Ordinary cops? Controller cops? One of the four before me, any of whom could be a secret enemy, springing a trap? Maybe. Probably. But just one car; it could be normal cops, it could be nothing, running was suspicious. I felt my legs rear, ready to run; horse panic shot through my mind.

"Cassie. Morph. Now!" Jake snapped. "We do not want to have to explain a half-horse half-person."

_Which way? Run or stay? Horse or human? _I didn't realise I'd spoken aloud until Jake replied.

"Human, human, human!" he said. "Everybody, stand in front of her!"

The police car squealed to a stop, sending the gravel flying. A single policeman stepped out. Jake waved at him.

My fur and tail disappeared.

"Morning," he said. "You kids, uh... hiding something?"

"Hiding something?" Jake repeated.

My spine realigned, my front legs disappeared into my chest.

"Step aside, all of you," he ordered.

I grew normal human hips and legs, balancing precariously on my two remaining hooves.

They stepped aside, just as my hooves melted into feet. The policeman stared at me, puzzled. But then he shrugged.

"Can we help you, officer?" Rachel asked in her best 'responsible' voice.

"We're making some inquiries," he said, still staring at me. "We're looking for some kids who were shooting off fireworks in the construction site across from the mall last night."

Enquiries. Out on a farm. Far from the construction site.

Had one of us been followed? Was one of us a Controller? Or were the yeerks just that thorough?

Marco was coughing.

"Something the matter with him?" the policeman asked.

"Nope," Jake said. "Nothing wrong with him."

"We want these kids," the policeman said. "We want them real bad. See, it was dangerous what they did. Could have been someone hurt. So we want to find the kids."

"I don't know anything about it," Jake said.

The policeman gave Jake a hard, searching look. Was what he had said suspicious? It didn't sound suspicious. "Hey, you know what?" he said. "You look familiar. You look like a young man I know named Tom."

"He's my brother," Jake said nervously.

"Tom's your brother, eh? Well, he's a good kid. I know him from The Sharing. I'm one of the adult supervisors. Great group, The Sharing. You should come to a meeting."

"Yeah, um, Tom invited me already," Jake said.

"We have a lot of fun."

"Yeah."

"Well, you call me if you hear anything about these kids in the construction site. I should warn you - they may come up with some wild story to conceal their guilt. But you're too smart to believe a bunch of crazy lies, aren't you?"

"He's a regular genius," Marco said.

"What's The Sharing?" I asked Tobias quietly as the cop strode back towards his car.

"Social club."

"Why does that Controller-policeman want Jake to join it?"

"No idea."

Finally the policeman took off.

"Okay, rule number one," Rachel announced firmly. "We don't do anything to attract attention. We have to be secret about everything. Especially morphing."

She was right. "Yeah, it was stupid of me," I said. I'd gotten carried away with how amazing it was to run through wide open spaces, and I'd been incautious.

"How did you manage to morph with clothing?" Jake asked. "When Tobias and I did it… well, let's just say it's a good thing neither of you girls was around."

"It takes practice," I said. "And it can only be tight clothing. You have to... trick your body, sort of. I tried it with a jacket on. It got shredded. I don't know what we'll do in the winter."

"That's not going to be a problem," Marco said firmly. "Because there isn't going to be any more morphing."

"Maybe Marco is right," Rachel said. "This is too big for us. We're just kids. We need to find someone important to tell this to. Someone we can trust."

"We can't trust anyone," Tobias said flatly. "Anyone could be a Controller. We tell the wrong person, we are all dead. And the whole world will be doomed."

They were all right, but they were all missing the point. It was too big for us, but there was no choice; there was nobody else. We couldn't tell the wrong person. But morphing wasn't just about the war, morphing could be about so much more than the war.

"Do you realise all we could do with this power?" I asked them. "Do you understand the scientific breakthroughs waiting to be made just by using it, let alone understanding it? We could communicate with animals. We could learn how they think. We could save endangered species."

"Humans may be the next endangered species, Cassie," Tobias said quietly. Missing the point, again.

Somehow, this didn't seem like the time for a discussion on scientific progress and animal rights. "What do you say, Jake?" I asked.

"Me?" He shrugged. "I don't know. Marco's right, we could all get killed. Rachel's right, this is too major for a bunch of kids. But Tobias is right, too. I mean, the whole world is in danger. And we can't trust anyone."

Rachel nodded. "And it occurs to me that even if we found someone we could trust, that wouldn't make this any safer," she said. "I mean, if we were responsible for word on this invasion getting out, it might just make the yeerks mad. They'd probably come for us anyway."

"So," I said, "what do we do?"

Tobias glanced at Jake.

"Hey, it's not up to me to decide," Jake said hotly.

"Let's take a vote," Rachel suggested.

"I vote we try to live long enough to get driver's licenses," Marco said.

"I vote we do what Elfangor said - fight," Tobias said.

"You've never even been in a fight," Marco sneered. "You can't handle the punks at school. Suddenly now you want to kick butt on that Visser Three freakazoid?"

Tobias said nothing, but a blush spread up his neck.

Despite just moments ago going on about this being too big for us, Rachel stepped forward and glared at Marco. "I vote with Tobias," she said. "I wish we could dump all this on someone else. But we can't."

Two for, one vehemently against. Just Jake and me.

I could vote for. I wanted to vote for. None of us were safe while there were yeerks on our planet. My vote would swing the vote if it was for, no matter what Jake voted.

But I didn't know what Jake was going to vote. I couldn't tell. And I could already see how we'd clustered around him as our leader. We needed him enthusiastically on board, not just tagging along due to peer pressure.

And Marco was useless to us if he was being dragged along. His position would be hard to shift, I knew. Marco's mother had died two years ago. Sailing accident. He was no coward, but the grief had torn his father apart; I strongly suspected that he hung on only for Marco. And Marco knew that. Marco might tag along resentfully for a bit, but when he pulled out, would Jake?

I glanced between Rachel and Tobias. I could fight alongside just those two. But I'd rather have more.

"Let's think it over for a while," I said. "This is a big decision. I mean, it's not like we're deciding whether to wear jeans or a skirt."

"Yeah, let's wait for a while," Jake agreed. "In the meantime, no one say anything to anyone. We just go back to normal life."

There was a smirk on Marco's face. He thought he'd won. He hadn't. There was no way anybody could be through what we'd been through, and then turn around and pretend it didn't happen. We'd change his mind. Somehow.

The meeting broke up without any surprise Controller ambushes, to my great relief. Marco and Jake went home. Tobias turned to leave, too; I caught his elbow. He looked at me, puzzled. But I knew that there was a chance that it would come down to just us three fighting. We needed to be sure we could be a team.

"Wanna see my animals?" I asked.


	13. Chapter 13

"We should be birds," Tobias said, surveying the rustling, squawking chaos that is the Wildlife Rehabilitation Clinic. The animals were perfectly safe, all being treated in their individual cages, but some of them weren't happy.

We had a few birds. A golden eagle with an infected leg. A Northern harrier with a head wound. A red-tailed hawk with an injured wing.

He chose the hawk.

"Does it really make sense to turn into an injured bird?" Rachel asked.

"The DNA isn't injured," Tobias said, gently pressing his fingers against the frightened red-tail. It calmed down instantly. "The morph should be fine."

Thinking about hair length, I wasn't completely sure of that. But if Tobias wanted to experiment, that was up to him.

"I'm worried about these yeerks," I said as Tobias withdrew his hand from the cage. "I mean, they could be anyone. How are we supposed to find them?"

"I don't know," Tobias said. "With their host's thoughts and memories they can blend in perfectly. Our best bet is probably to find a yeerk pool."

"Yeerk pool?" I asked.

"Yeerks can't get all the nutrients they need to live inside their hosts. Every three days they have to go swim in a pool to soak up nutrients, or they starve. Especially Kandrona rays."

"Kandrona rays?"

"Their sun. They carry artificial versions on their ships. The yeerk pools concentrate the rays, which they need to live."

"And how," I said, "do you know this?"

"Elfangor told me. Back at the construction site."

He had hesitated, at the end...

"He gave me a whole bundle off... stuff. It's still all tangled up in my head." Tobias was shrinking as he spoke. A delicate feather pattern etched itself into his skin, then sprang up into actual feathers. Soon, a red-tailed hawk pushed its way out of a pile of Tobias' clothes.

[You should try it,] he said. He was speaking openly, but clearly addressing Rachel.

She bit her lip. "Maybe later."

[Come on. Don't you want to fly?]

With Tobias encouraging her, Rachel acquired and morphed the golden eagle. Then, together, they took off into the sky.

"Two hours!" I shouted after them.

Yeerks.

I sat on a crate and thought to myself. Any of them could still be Controllers. Or none of them. If there were Controllers, I figured, it wouldn't be more than one or two; any more and they'd simply have overpowered the rest of us when we were together. The fact that we hadn't all been captured yet suggested that they might all be safe... but it was impossible to be sure.

Rachel. She and Jake were the most likely to have been caught. But wouldn't she have overpowered me while we were alone together in the field? Jake... maybe. Marco? Unlikely. He was pretty clear about not wanting to be involved. It would make more sense for a Controller to get involved, and lead us into a trap. Tobias? Knew too much. That was suspicious. But he had had a strange affinity for the andalite. He had waited behind. And he wasn't hiding that he knew too much, so he could be telling the truth.

Who could I trust?


	14. Chapter 14

I spent the rest of the morning doing biology homework. When I ran out of homework, I just read the textbook. It didn't have very much information that I didn't already know; growing up with two ex-research scientist veterinarian parents, surrounded by animals and biology books, you pick up a lot.

"Your friends go home did they, honey?" my mother asked, drifting through the lounge room. I always end up reading in the lounge room, for some reason.

"Uh-huh."

"Some of them were new."

I looked up, gave her my I'm-reading-and-need-peace look. "Yep."

"That's good." She smiled, and a chill went down my spine.

She was probably asking because both my parents were concerned that I didn't have many friends. She probably thought it was good that I was hanging out with more people than just Rachel. Probably.

She might have been curious because we were a collection of five kids, and my trip home from the mall last night took me near the construction site.

I looked back down at my book, willing my voice to remain normal. "They're from school. Their grades need improving. We're forming a study group."

"Oh." Slight disappointment. Because she was hoping I'd made new friends? Or because she was hoping she'd found the kids that the Visser was looking for? "Well, good on you for helping." She left the room.

I finished the chapter, went upstairs, and fished the piece of paper I'd been writing on the previous night out of my pocket. Then I tore it into tiny little pieces. It was evidence. I couldn't leave any evidence of any kind.

There was _life_ on other _planets_.

And it had come to _Earth_.

Our little planet, our cradle of life, of meaning, that could very well have been the single, fragile representation of life in the universe... wasn't. We weren't even the only intelligent life. There were sentient aliens and they were similar enough to us to communicate.

And somehow, I had to protect my planet from them.


	15. Chapter 15

Jake called. He invited me to a meeting of The Sharing. Some sort of beach barbecue.

"The thing that cop wanted you to go to?"

"Yeah. Tom invited me."

He sounded awkward. Was Jake inviting me on a date?

"I thought we could all go. You know, hang out."

Not a date. Why did he want us? I was almost certain the cop who had randomly invited him was a controller; was this a yeerk thing? Did he need backup? Or was it a trap? Was Jake a Controller, trying to round us all up and lead us to our doom...

"I'll come," I said quickly. If Jake needed help, I couldn't abandon him. If the others needed help in a trap, I couldn't abandon them. And if it was a trap – or if it wasn't, and one of them got captured because I wasn't there – they'd only come for me later.

So that's how I ended up agreeing to eat sausages and watch seventeen-year-olds play night volleyball on the beach.

We walked, while Marco explained what we were doing. "We're pretty sure Tom's a Controller," he said.

"Jake's _brother_ Tom?"

"Yeah."

Realisation dawned. "The Sharing is a yeerk organisation. A way to find hosts or something, probably."

"We don't know anything yet, alright?" Jake snapped. "We're just investigating."

Right. Sore spot there. "So we're just... hanging around? Looking for anything unusual?"

"Pretty much," Marco said.

When we were nearly there, Tobias peeled off into the dunes. A few moments later, a red-tailed hawk rose into the sky. I'd never noticed how fun flying looked, before it became something I could realistically do. "I have _got_ to try that. It looks wonderful."

"Yeah," Jake said, idly. He was looking ahead at the beach, where a bonfire glowed. People were all around it, playing, talking, eating. Kids from school. Adults. People I didn't know. Others I did. Each one a potential enemy.

How many Controllers were there? Were we fighting the beginning of an invasion, or the end of one?

I munched idly on a sausage and watched Jake and Tom play volleyball. I played some beach frisbee. I helped two kids build a sandcastle. These people didn't seem like evil invading aliens. But then, if it wasn't for the andalite prince, I'd never even know there was an invasion. They weren't supposed to seem like invaders.

People were happy to explain the group structure to me. You could go along to meetings, like we were, and hang out, see if you liked the group. After about three meetings, you were expected to decide whether you wanted to join or not. Executive members got to go to the parties and have fun, but it was the full members who decided whether they should get full membership and participate properly in the group. Once I could identify the members, the whole thing looked strange.

Full members were _nice_. They were way too nice. It was like a summer camp recruitment video made real. Fun, adventure, friends. This was no happy hangout. This was a recruitment drive, and the members were taking it very seriously.

"Hi. It's Cassie, right?"

The speaker was a brunette girl, about my age. It took me a moment to place her – one of Rachel's friends from gymnastics. Also the daughter of our school's assistant principal. "Melissa. Hi!"

"Having fun?"

"I guess. You a member?"

Melissa shook her head. "I got dragged along by my family. You know how it is. You?"

"I'm here with Jake. And Rachel."

Melissa frowned and looked around. "Rachel's here?"

"Somewhere." Jake was saying goodbye to his brother. As Tom left, Jake looked over and caught my eye. "Uh, I gotta go. Nice to see you again."

"You, too."

Marco and I both headed for Jake. Marco was waving goodbye to some kids playing frisbee in the surf. "Okay," he said, "I admit it. I was wrong. These are just normal people having a good time. And Tom is not a Controller."

Jake swallowed and shook his head. "I think he tried to warn me."

"Who? What?"

"Tom! He was telling me how great the Sharing was and that I should become an executive member and he kind of... twitched."

"So?" Marco said. "He got sand in his eye. We're on a beach."

"Not like that."

"Didn't the... you know... say hosts could fight sometimes?" I asked quietly. "Where's Tom now?"

"Full member's meeting," Jake said. "I'd really like to see what goes on in there."


	16. Chapter 16

Jake, as it turned out, had a dog morph – his golden retriever, Homer. He could get close and see what was going on, playing the part of a stray. Tobias and Rachel would watch from the sky. Marco and I had no morphs that could help; we'd have to stay out of the way.

Tobias had been in morph for over an hour already, so Jake convinced him to come down, demorph and remorph before they headed off, leaving Marco and I surrounded by possible enemies and trying not to look nervous.

"This is ridiculous," Marco muttered. "This whole thing."

"You came," I pointed out.

"For Jake. After this, I'm out."

"Ignoring this whole thing won't make the invasion go away."

"Nothing we can do will make the invasion go away! All we can do here is get ourselves killed! This is too big for us. We should tell the military, let them handle it. We do some shapeshifting in front of them and they'll listen to anything we have to say."

"Or they'll be controllers, and shoot or enslave us."

Jake was gone a long time.

Surely, if something had gone wrong, Tobias or Rachel would have told us? Unless they were captured too. I scanned the sky; no sign of them. "I'm going in," I told Marco.

"Oh, sure, put more people in danger, that's a brilliant plan. Cassie! You have no way of blending in!" he hissed at me as I strode off into the dunes.

He was right, of course. I crouched and crept closer to the meeting, keeping an eye out for a sandy-coloured stray dog. Between the dunes, I could see what I was pretty sure was the side of Tom's face. He was speaking, but too quietly for me to hear. I squinted. Who was he talking to? The way the man sat looked familiar...

He leaned forward to answer something, and I saw his face. It was Mr Chapman, the assistant principal at our school.

Tom. Mr Chapman. How many Controllers were people we knew, people we'd have to interact with almost daily? It seemed like an odd coincidence. No, I reminded myself; you don't know how many Controllers there are. If there are enough Controllers about, happening to know two of them is no big coincidence.

That was a scary thought.

"Hey." I jumped and turned to face the voice; a policeman. The one from the farm! How bad did this look? No, no, it was fine; we'd tagged along with Jake. He'd invited Jake himself. "What are you doing back here?" he asked.

My parents had taught me how to handle police. I hadn't really needed to – I didn't tend to go out much, except with Rachel – but I knew what to do. "I was just looking for shells," I said.

He gave me a long, hard look. I returned it with wide-eyed innocence.

"Looking for shells? Out here alone?"

I was pretty sure he wasn't going to pull me up on some environmental preservation law or something, like those laws that say you can't take beach sand. I was pretty sure he had more pressing things to worry about. And I was tiny, and female, and at a big public event, and not carrying anything suspicious. So there were two ways this could go. Either he would keep playing policeman, and I could ask him if I was under arrest and make him either arrest me or let me walk away. Or he could skip all that and drag me off to be a Controller.

The policeman glanced out over the dunes, back toward the beach. We could hear people out there, laughing, playing volleyball, chasing each other through the dunes. They'd hear me if I screamed. They'd come running and see a policeman manhandling a teenager, and that would cause a fuss, at least. A fuss very close to their secret meeting.

"This meeting is just for full members," he told me eventually. "Private business. You understand?"

"Yes, sir."

"Okay, take off. But I have my eye on you. Get back with the others."

I turned and walked away as quickly as possible without looking like I was fleeing. I jumped when a dog came bounding out of the dunes to join me.

"Oh, it's you."

[Yeah. That was close. What were you doing there?] Jake asked.

"I wanted to make sure you were okay!"

[I was safer than you were.]

He was right, of course. Stupid of me. "Anyway, what happened?"

[He's a Controller. He's definitely a Controller. He...]

"He what?"

[He suspects I was at the construction site. He, his yeerk, wants to make me a Controller or kill me.]

We found Marco, Rachel and Tobias waiting for us at the edge of the dunes. From the angry look on Marco's face, I could guess the others had already told him of the situation. "So now we've got Tom and Chapman to worry about," he said. "Does the universe just hate us?"

Reluctantly, Jake demorphed. "I think we're safe for now. Chapman told Tom not to kill anyone at a Sharing meeting. They don't need that kind of publicity."

I nodded, slowly. "They don't know we can morph, do they?"

"I don't think so, or we'd probably be dead already. They just think some kids saw something, so we're a bit of a security risk. But once we start talking, they'll be able to find us."

"Then we're fine, because we're not going to talk," Marco said. "We're going to go home, play video games, and get on with our lives. We pretend like this never happened."

Jake and I exchanged a glance. There was simply no way to pretend this never happened.

"Marco," Jake said, "I'm saving Tom."

"Just how do you figure you'll do that?" Marco asked sarcastically. "Let's see, it's you versus Chapman, the cops, a bunch of hork-bajir and taxxons, and, worst of all, that creep, Visser Three. All you can do to fight them is turn into a dog and bite their ankles. It's like being stuck in the most impossible video game ever invented."

"I'm pretty good at video games," Jake said grimly.

Marco barked a loud, humourless laugh. I jumped and glanced around, looking for people looking at us suspiciously, but of course that was ridiculous; a small group of teenagers chatting and laughing at a barbecue wasn't suspicious unless I kept glancing around nervously like an idiot.

"He won't be alone," Rachel said. "I'm in this, too."

"And me," Tobias said instantly.

I took Jake's hand. "Me too."

"Swell," Marco said. "So suddenly you're the Fantastic Four. This isn't a comic book. This is real. None of you get it, do you? You think you're immortal. Well you're not! People die! This is an _alien invasion_. If you do this, you're all going to _die_."

We heard the sound of people coming through the dunes. The meeting of the full members had broken up.

"Everyone, quiet," Jake said. "We'll let this ride... for now."


	17. Chapter 17

Jake wanted a morph to spy on Chapman. That was easy. We had various birds for speed and rodents for stealth at the clinic, but only one thing with the size, speed and manoeuvrability to chase somebody through a school.

"It's not a patient," I explained as I crawled under the cages, "but there are always a few about..." Half a minute later, I crawled out with a small, struggling animal in my hand. He stared at it.

"A lizard."

"Yep. A green anole."

"You want me to be a lizard."

"Hey, you want to follow somebody stealthily or not?"

He looked at it for a few seconds, then nodded. "Thanks." He poked the lizard with one finger and it stopped struggling. "Thanks, Cassie."

"You know, it could take days to find out anything. If you find out anything at all."

"Then I watch him for days."

"Don't forget the two-hour limit."

"I won't."

"Be careful."

"I will."

"Jake..."

He looked at me expectantly, waiting for me to finish. But I hadn't really thought about how to phrase what I wanted to say. Tom was important to Jake, I knew that. They didn't act like other siblings with an age gap that I knew. They didn't act like Rachel and her little sisters, who she constantly ended up babysitting and seemed to consider mostly annoying. Tom was Jake's friend, despite the age gap; more than that, he was Jake's idol. He'd been the star of the basketball team back when he was our age, and I suspected he was the whole reason Jake even got into basketball.

I didn't have any siblings. I couldn't truly understand what he was going through. But the thought of his brother in the thrall of that enemy... having heard his brother order his death... it must be cutting him up inside. The very concept of an alien invasion was too big for me to grasp, but for Jake, I could see how that wouldn't be a problem. For him, the whole invasion could be condensed to its one important point, one face, one single instance. His brother.

"Be careful," I said again.

He just smiled.

He left, and I let the lizard go. There was no reason for me to hold onto it. I'd absorbed its DNA before even taking it out from under the cages.

As if I was letting him go in alone.


	18. Chapter 18

I don't have much free time on weekends. There are a lot of chores to be done in the Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre. But the free time I did have on Sunday, I decided to spend in one of the unused horse stalls in the barn, turning into a lizard and back again until it became second nature. I was tempted to just practise in my room. But that would be stupidly dangerous.

The lizard was different to the horse. For one thing, everything was huge. Little stones on the floor of the stall that I hadn't even noticed before were now bigger than my feet. The bottom of the stall door was too high to be relevant. My own clothes were mountains. My feet felt... wrong... with a new shape and clinging ability, my long, green tail changed my centre of gravity (not that I was all that heavy anyway), and the big flap of skin under my chin – my dewlap – felt like it should get in my way, even though it didn't.

And the instincts.

_Run! Hide!_

This was no calm herd animal. Before I even realised what I was doing, I'd shot along the ground (little lizards are fast, and it looks even faster when your chin is almost scraping the floor) to hide in one of my own shoes.

Okay.

If we were going to fight aliens, I was going to have to learn to deal with new instincts. I crept out of the shoe.

A noise! _Run!_

I stopped, halfway up a wall. The lizard brain wasn't afraid; a wall was as good as the ground, and less things could catch me there. With another burst of speed, I'd wedged my body into a corner.

Footsteps. "Cassie?"

It was Dad! Quick, hide! I darted back down to the floor and hid under the horse trough before I realised how stupid I was being. He wasn't looking for a lizard.

I could hear him walking nearer, closer to my stall. _Don't come in_. I had no way to explain a pile of my clothes sitting on the floor, and I was far too small to move them. He walked past the stall. "Cassie, are you in here?" He walked the length of the barn, then turned and left.

When I was certain I was alone, I demorphed, and put my clothes back on over my leotard.

Okay. Morphing threw a whole bunch of instincts at me, but it didn't _seem_ to affect my capacity to think in any other respect. As a lizard, I'd been perfectly capable on conscious, sentient thought. (It only then occurred to me how very stupid it had been to try the morph without supervision – what if I hadn't been able to think consciously? – but Tobias and Rachel had had no trouble with birds.) So all I needed to do was get a handle on the new instincts, or at least be aware of them so I knew how to handle and compensate for them.

Why was I able to think properly in a lizard brain?

The barn had a small shelf of books in it, just books that had migrated out there when somebody was supervising a difficult pregnancy or whatever for hours at a time. Most of them were trashy romance novels or science fiction, but there were a few biology books too. I found the one I wanted and found the picture I'd remembered seeing in there once.

Animal brains. Bird, reptile, mammal and fish. Humans and horses were both mammals. The anole was a reptile. Tobias and Rachel had both tried birds.

Mammal brains have a neocortex, a shell of brain tissue that, according to the diagrams, other animals didn't have. The neocortex was thought to be responsible for abstract and conscious thought, as well as some sensory perception. So how were we thinking consciously when we weren't mammals? Birds... birds had been shown to have some of the reasoning abilities that mammals used their neocortex for, but lizards definitely hadn't.

A large amount of the work the neocortex did was thought to be about social interaction. I'd have to try having conversations as a lizard, or something.

After I went to see what Dad wanted (turned out he just needed me to hold a ladder for him), I went back to morphing practice. The lizard, I figured, would never be as natural as the horse, which had a lot more in common with humans. But I could get a decent handle on it.

I just hoped that it would be as easy to do inside a crowded school.


	19. Chapter 19

Gym. Then recess.

I waited until nobody was looking before I climbed into my locker. There weren't too many private places to morph on school grounds. I hoped it wasn't something we were going to need to do very often.

I shrank, first. The tiny metal room became a lot less cramped. My skin became rough, pebbly; I was almost lizard-sized when I fell forward onto my hands and my spine lengthened into a tail. When I was done, I crawled out of the little grate in the locker door. Somebody was coming! _Run!_

I clung to the wall – didn't want to get stepped on – and manoeuvred my way out of the gym and down the hall, keeping low near the floor. Where was I? I needed to take a left and...

Another lizard, a few feet ahead. Experiment time.

[Jake!] I called, directing my thought at the little lizard in front of me. He paused.

[Cassie?]

[Above you.] So I could thought-speak privately, as the andalite had said, and Jake hadn't needed to know where I was to respond. I'd directed my thought-speak in physical space, to the lizard in front of me. He'd directed his reply to me, without knowing where I was. Both worked. Interesting.

Jake scampered onto the wall to join me. He was missing his tail. [What are you doing here?] he snapped, flaring his dewlap and hissing at me. I hissed back.

[I wasn't letting you go in alone. What if you get caught?]

[What if you get caught?]

[If one of us gets caught the other can go for help!]

[Nobody's looking for lizards, Cassie!]

[You might get trapped under something, or stood on!] I noticed that we were both bobbing our bodies up and down at each other. Jake nipped forward and bit me on the tail. I hissed. [What was that about?!]

[I don't...]

Realisation dawned. [Jake, I think we have a problem. Green anoles are very territorial. If we don't want a fight to break out of here, one of us needs to leave.]

[Well, I call dibs on following Chapman.]

[Fine. But we take shifts. No more than an hour each.]

[Fine. Oh, look, there he is – I gotta go!] Jake took off.

[Be careful!] I called after him. Only when he was well out of sight did I go back to my locker.

Well. That was a waste of time.

Andalites could thought-speak. Morphed animals could thought-speak, including mammals. But humans couldn't. If I morphed another human, would the morph be able to thought-speak? Would any of the others be open to me acquiring their DNA? (Doing it without permission would, of course, be wrong.)

I was so excited about looking into new aspects of morphing, I was almost disappointed when Jake found the yeerk pool entrance on his first shift.

"It's under the _school_?" Marco asked, cocking an eyebrow. "Wow, that makes perfect sense."

We'd gone to the mall together after class. The idea had been to go to the food court and talk, but somehow we all ended up following Rachel around while she shopped for new tops. Tobias was the only one who, in the shopping confusion, had actually managed to acquire food. Marco was stealing his chips.

"It's bigger than the school, I think," Jake said. "But the entrance is in the school. The... sounds... were far away."

"Sounds?" I asked neutrally.

"Screams. Human screams."

"You were a lizard at the time," Marco pointed out. "Who knows what you heard?"

"I know," Jake said.

People screaming, in their few moments of freedom while their yeerks were in the pool... "I can't stand the thought of what's happening to people down there," I shuddered. "It's sickening."

"We have to do something," Rachel said.

"Yeah, let's rush right down there," Marco said. "Then it can be us screaming."

"Marco, you can't just ignore what's going on," Rachel said.

"Sure I can," he said. "All I have to do is remind myself that hey, guess what? I don't want to die."

"That's it, then?" Rachel demanded, outraged. "Just whatever is best for Marco?"

"Rachel, you've never lost anyone, have you?" Marco snapped. "People die. They die all the time. It's not like a movie, where the hero will live until the end, or where there's a big dramatic lead-up and a nice poignant scene. People die for no reason. They fall under a wave, they get hit by a car, they get chopped to bits by a walking alien cuisinart, and nobody even notices until they're told later and then everything is different and it's not fair. People say life isn't fair, Rachel, but everyone seems to secretly believe that if it's them they'll be okay. You won't be okay. You'll die for absolutely no reason and you'll leave confused and heartbroken families behind you."

"Not me," Tobias said softly. He smiled his sad, crooked smile. "It's true. No one gives a rat's rear about me."

"I do," Rachel said.

"Look," Jake said. "I'm not asking anyone else to go with me. But I don't have a choice. I heard that scream today. And I know Tom is going down there tonight. He's my brother. I have to try and save him. I have to do it. For Tom. "

"I'll go with you," Tobias said, "For the andalite."

Marco sneered. "You're not fooling anyone acting all – "

Tobias, face blank, raised a hand to stop him. "I'm not 'acting' anything. I'm being logical. You're right; you have family to think about. I don't. I'll go."

"There's no one else who can do anything to stop the yeerks," Rachel said. "I'm scared to death, just thinking about it. But I'm there."

Marco looked sick. He gave me a dirty took. He shook his head. "This is bad," he said. "This is so bad. If it wasn't for Tom I'd walk away."

"Look, Marco, you don't have to — " Jake started.

"Oh, shut up!" he snapped. "You're my best friend, you jerk. Like I'm going to let you go face all this alone? I'm in. I'm in, to rescue Tom. That's it. Then I'm done."

Everyone, I realised, was looking at me. "You know, back in the old days — I mean, the real, real old days — the Africans, the early Europeans, the Native Americans... they all believed animals had spirits. And they would call on those spirits to protect them from evil. They would ask the spirit of the fox for his cunning. They'd ask the spirit of the eagle for his sight. They would ask the lion for his strength. That's... that's what we're doing here. We're still just scared little humans, trying to borrow the mind-of the fox, and the eyes of the eagle... or the hawk," I added, with a smile for Tobias, "and the strength of the lion. We're calling on the animals to help protect us from evil."

"Will their strength be enough?" Jake wondered.

"I don't know," I admitted. "It's like all the basic forces of planet Earth are being brought into the battle."

Marco rolled his eyes. "Nice story, Cassie. But we're five normal kids. Up against the yeerks. If it was a football game, who would you bet on? We're toast."

"Kids are one of the basic forces of planet Earth, Marco," I said. "Do you have any idea how many wars have been fought, turned, won – how many exoduses led, how many new lands colonised, how many technologies and religions and societies created – by people that today would be considered kids? If there's one thing we know about this planet, it's that Mother Earth has some tricks up her sleeves." Near boundless variation and adaptability had saved life on Earth many times before. There was no reason we couldn't turn those strengths on outside invaders.

"Good grief," Marco said. "Let's all buy Birkenstocks and go hug some trees."

We all laughed at that.

"Cassie is right about one thing," Rachel said seriously. "The only thing we have going for us is this animal morphing thing. And so far the only morphs we've acquired are a cat, a bird, a dog, a horse, and a lizard. I think we need a little more firepower. We should head for The Gardens. We need to acquire more DNA — from some animals that are not going to be easy to acquire."

Jake nodded. "Yeah. I don't think the hawk, horse, and lizard team is going to impress the yeerks. Rachel's right. I think we have to head to The Gardens. We need to get some help from Mother Earth's toughest children." He turned to me. "Can you get us in?"

"I can get in free," I said. "You guys will have to pay, but I can use my mom's employee discount, so it'll be cheaper."

"Oh, I'm sure we could talk them into letting us in for nothing," Marco said. "Just tell them we're Animorphs."

"Tell them we're what?" Rachel asked.

"Idiot teenagers with a death wish," Marco said.

"Animorphs." I tried the word out. It sounded okay.


	20. Chapter 20

The Gardens is clear across the city from the school. We leant Jake our notes for the classes he'd missed spying on Chapman, and he copied them during the bus ride. It was a mostly silent ride; the enemy could be anywhere.

Even among us. Jake had found the yeerk pool very quickly. In a convenient place. That was suspicious.

Why was the entrance at the school? Just a convenient spot, preplanned? Or constructed as a response to needs? Were there a lot of Controller teachers? Controller children? Children would be a reasonably good target; largely above suspicion, expected to behave erratically...

The Gardens themselves were as crowded as always.

"I don't really need to go in," Tobias said as we pooled our limited cash to buy tickets. "I'm happy with just my hawk morph. I don't want to be anything else."

"I think that's a mistake," Rachel said. "Our one real weapon is the power to morph. We should acquire as many useful morphs as we can."

"Not as many as we can," I said. "We don't know if there's a limit on how many animal forms we can have. We need as varied a range of abilities as possible, not sheer numbers."

"What kind of animal morphs are going to be able to deal with Visser Three when he turns into that big monster that ate the andalite?" Jake asked.

Marco winked. "Fleas? No one can kill fleas. We'll itch him to death."

Jake smiled. "So now you're suddenly Mr. Hopeful?"

"No, I'm just so scared I'm getting weird," he said. "I haven't done this morphing stuff. You guys all have. I'm not even a full-fledged Animorph yet. I'm still normal."

"I still feel normal," I protested.

"Cassie, you can turn into a horse," Marco said. "Very few normal kids can do that. It's different for Jake, turning into a lizard. He's always been a reptile."

I ignored Marco and Jake's bantering and got into line. It always took forever to get through the gate.

"Rachel and Tobias could've flown in," I remarked once we were inside.

"Dammit, we could've saved ourselves like an hour!" Rachel exclaimed. "Why didn't you way anything before?"

"To be honest I only just remembered that you could turn into birds. This is all still a little weird."

Most of the Gardens is about rides and stalls selling overpriced food. The part we wanted, the animal part, only took up about a fifth of the park. I led the others to the tropical house, which served as the main building and marked the start of the zoo part of the park. The tropical building was a climate controlled for animals that needed tropical weather. Other exhibits were out in the open, but connected via service corridors for the zookeepers and maintenance workers. The exhibits were designed so that guests wouldn't see the walkways.

"Alright," I said, "everyone act natural, I'm taking you inside."

"Inside where?" Marco asked.

I explained the service corridors and led them inside through a piece of fake rainforest. "Okay, look, if any staff people stop us, the story is we're here to see my mom," I said. "Of course, it's so late in the afternoon she won't be here. I hope. Because if she finds out I've been dragging four of my friends around back here... well, I can't be saving the world from alien invaders if I'm grounded. Hopefully, there won't be many staff people here at all."

We shuffled along the hallway. The others looked pretty uncomfortable. I guessed they'd never wandered through restricted parts of zoos before. On either side of the main hall, there were side paths that led to the different exhibits. Unfortunately, the doorways to the exhibits just had numbers on them, which meant we couldn't split up since I was the only one who knew what was behind them. Behind some of those doors were animals you didn't want to just walk in on.

First, I stopped by Big Jim's cage. Opposable thumbs and strength? I was sure we could use that. "How do you guys feel about gorillas? This is Big Jim's cage. He just came over from another zoo, so he's in his own private environment for now. He's very gentle."

"Oh. You mean, does one of us want to acquire his DNA?" Jake asked.

"That is why we're here, Jake," Rachel pointed out. She batted her eyes at Marco. "How about you, Marco? Haven't you always wanted to be a big, hairy guy?"

Marco didn't look like he was crazy about the idea.

"Maybe Marco should try something easier for his first morph," Jake said. "You know, like a cuddly little koala or something."

Koalas are actually quite vicious if threatened, but I kept that fact to myself.

"Koala?" Marco gave Jake a dirty look. "Open that door, Cassie." He hesitated. "You said gentle, right?"

"Gorillas are extremely gentle." Unless you make them mad. I pulled an apple out of my backpack and gave it to Marco. "Here. You just open the door. The way it's set up, none of the visitors will be able to see you unless you walk clear out into the cage. Besides, there's an extra security gate, so he can't just jump out and you can't just walk in. So we just open the door, and hope Big Jim feels like eating."

Behind the door was a second door of steel bars, with a little cutaway section for the handlers to shove the food through. The entire door opening was concealed behind a fake rock ledge so it wasn't visible to the people looking into the cage. But Big Jim noticed us right away. He climbed heavily down from his perch on a rock ledge and took a good look at us through the bars.

Somebody behind me gasped, and I remembered that they probably hadn't seen a gorilla up close before. Most people don't realise how big they are. Big Jim had fingers the size of my wrist. But he didn't mind us being there. Mostly he seemed interested in Marco's apple. He looked Marco over, snorted like he wasn't impressed, and then held out his hand.

"Hand him the apple," I prompted. "He wants the apple."

"I loved your work in King Kong Versus Godzilla," Marco told the ape. He stuck his hand through the bars and held out the apple. Jim lifted the apple and began inspecting it closely.

"Hold his hand," Jake said.

"Yeah, right," Marco laughed.

"When you acquire DNA, the animal goes-into a kind of trance," Jake said. "Go ahead, grab his hand and concentrate."

Marco tentatively touched the gorilla's wrist. "Nice monkey." The gorilla ignored him. Big Jim was much more interested in the apple than in any of us.

"Concentrate," Rachel urged.

Marco closed his eyes. The ape closed his eyes.

"This is so cool," Tobias commented. "You realize that gorilla could pull Marco apart like he was a paper doll. Look at those arms!"

Marco opened one eye. "Tobias? Being terrified gets in the way of concentrating. So how about if you shut up about his arms?"

Suddenly I heard a whirring sound. I looked down the hall, then back. An electric cart, coming toward us.

"Just act natural," I reminded everyone. Marco slipped out and I slammed the door on Big Jim. "As long as it isn't a security guy, we're probably okay."

The cart came up to us. Its driver was a man wearing a stained, tan lab coat over his jeans. I searched my memory. Was it Jim? Jack? In the back of the cart were two large white plastic buckets full of something brown and horrible-smelling. "Hey, you're Cassie, right? The doc's kid? How's it going?"

"Fine," I replied. I waved casually, and the man drove right on past.

"That was easy," Rachel said. "He didn't even seem to care that we're back here."

"Where next?" I asked, when we reached a four-way intersection. Some idiot had left an electronic cart there. I hoped they weren't nearby.

"What are we near?" Jake asked.

"Okay, that walkway leads to the outer exhibits. That one leads to the offices and storage facilities. These two go around the main building exhibits. We're close to... let me see... um, bats and snakes that way. The jaguar and the dolphin tank that way."

Rachel started down the hallway to our right. "Dolphins. I love dolphins."

"Wait," I said, trotting after her. "What are we going to do with dolphin morphs?"

"I don't know, dive in the pool and eat the yeerks?" She grinned. For a terrifying moment, I had no idea whether she was being serious or not.

"Dolphins are smart," I pointed out. "Yeerks might be able to infest them. In fact we should probably not use any plans that involve climbing into this yeerk pool."

"Spoilsport," she said, sticking her tongue out at me.

And that's when the voice yelled, "Hey! Hey, you! What are you kids doing back here?" Brown uniform. Security!

"Security!" I yelped. "Oh, man, they'll take us all in to the office. They'll call my mom. I do not want to explain this to her."

"Split up!" Jake said. "Just like at the construction site: One guy can't get us all!"

"This guy looks like my grandfather," Rachel said. "Not like that hork-bajir that was after us."

"You kids hold on!"

"Oh, man. Oh, man," I took off down one hallway, Rachel and Tobias following.

"Where'd Jake and Marco go?" Rachel hissed.

"Other way!" Tobias replied.

We heard the security guard's cart start up again, and the sound fade. He was chasing Jake and Marco. We stopped running.

"If Marco sells me out to my mom I will kill him," I muttered. "Animals. We're here for animals." Jake and Marco had headed for the big animals, which made it difficult for us to get down there without getting caught. "Still want a dolphin, Rachel?"

"Maybe later."

"Anyone want, um, snakes and lizards?"

Rachel snorted. "I don't think so."

Tobias smiled. "Might as well stick with hawk, if that's the alternative."

"I'll have you know that a cobra's strike is impossible to dodge," I pointed out.

"Uh-huh," Rachel replied, "if the cobra can get to its prey without being stepped on. We could try for the jaguar."

"Only a complete and utter moron would try to get into a big cat's cage and touch it without proper training and a dart gun," I informed her. "Especially a jaguar." I thought for a minute, about how the paths crossed, and smiled. "Actually, Rachel," I said, "I think I can get you to a morph you'll like."


	21. Chapter 21

"This," I said, "is Betsy."

Betsy blinked at us with her big docile eyes and flapped her large, leathery ears to cool herself. Her gaze fixated on the chunk of meal in Rachel's hands.

"Go on," I said.

Rachel grinned like all her Christmases has come at once and lifted her hand. The African elephant's trunk stretched out and prodded at the meal. Slowly, Rachel laid her other hand on Betsy's trunk and closed her eyes. Seconds later, Betsy's eyes also fluttered shut.

A minute later, we were gone.

"You sure you don't want more firepower than the hawk, Tobias?" I asked.

"Have you seen hawks fly? The hawk will be fine. What about you? Going to go in and kick butt as a horse?"

What did I want to be? Everything. But what did I want to be down in that pool, surrounded by humans and aliens shooting at me? Did I want to tear hork-bajir apart with Big Jim's hands? Did I want to impale taxxons on Betsy's tusks? Did I want to crush humans under the charge of a rhino?

"Somebody's gotta carry Tom out," I pointed out. "Marco's going to be the only one with opposable thumbs so he'll probably be doing something else, Rachel's bulk will be better as a shield and too big a target for transport. Tobias will be way too small and we don't know what Jake will be. So the horse is perfect."

We wandered over to the dolphin tank, where we met up with Jake and Marco who gave us a ridiculous and much-exaggerated story about getting trapped in the tiger cage. Then we went home.

Jake had charted what he remembered of Tom's comings and goings and he was pretty sure that that night was Tom's trip to the yeerk pool. It would have to be that night. Well, technically it could be in another three nights, but Jake wouldn't hear of it and I wasn't sure if Marco would still be on board then. Our mission was to save Tom, and that night was our best shot.

That was a lie, of course.

No matter what Jake said, our mission wasn't to save Tom. Tobias had made it clear that yeerks needed to leave their host every three days, or starve. If the mission was about Tom, it made a lot more sense to grab him before he got to the yeerk pool at all. That Jake wanted to go to the pool to do this... it had to be that he wanted a look around, to sniff out the enemy territory, maybe even to do some damage. Did he even know that? Did he know what his primary goal was?

Or was I wrong? Was he simply opting for a method – consciously or subconsciously – that would let him attack the yeerks? Had he simply jumped to the all-guns-blazing option in some twisted desire to make the invaders pay?

Not important, right now. We save Tom. Then we decide where to go from there.

I did some homework. I ate dinner. I joked and laughed with my parents. I didn't cry, I didn't say goodbye to them, I didn't tell them how very much I loved them or say any of the things I'd never said. I didn't do any of the things I really wanted to do, given that this could very easily be the last time I'd ever see them. And I didn't do those things, because I had no idea if I could trust them. I had no idea if there was an alien surrounding their brains that would be mildly puzzled by the display of affection, only to put everything together properly a week or so later, and enslave us.

I didn't let myself cry until I'd snuck out of the house after dinner. I planned to arrive a half-hour in advance to get a feel for the comings and goings of people in the school. I hated going in without a plan.

I didn't dare to enter alone. I hung out around the side of the school, hanging around in the shadow of a tree and trying not to look suspicious. That wasn't all that hard; the school was not nearly as deserted as one would expect at nighttime. More janitors and security guards than strictly necessary, especially since every time one went past they had a different face. Were they just recycling a few uniforms, or did they all have them? There were a few teachers still hanging around. A couple of students, too. I made a mental note of every face I recognised. Chapman. Ms Salinger, an English teacher. Mr Tidwell, a History teacher. Nick, a kid who sat behind me in math class.

Tom.

I quickly put the tree between us. Now, I could do it now. Horses are a lot stronger than most people think. I could go horse and grab him and run. And be shot, probably, by one of the guards walking around.

"Hey." The voice was familiar, but I couldn't place it. "Hey, you!" Were they talking to me? I looked up.

It was that policeman! That same policeman from my house and the Sharing meeting.

This looked really, really bad.

I could run. But he'd raise an alarm, I'd never get away. He clearly already recognised me. Instead I stepped out of the shadows, making sure he could see both my empty hands. "Yes, officer?"

"Who are you? Identify yourself."

I could pretend to be a yeerk. No, I didn't know enough about them; I'd be found out immediately and that would just look more suspicious. The only option was to play dumb.

"Ca... Catherine, sir. How can I help you?"

He grabbed my shoulder, making no effort to be gentle, and tipped my chin back with his other hand, peering into my eyes like he was trying to see right into my brain. "I said identify yourself."

"I... I told you, my name's Catherine. Catherine, um, Walker." If I lived through this, I was going to have to get a lot better at lying.

"As I thought. Seen anything really unusual lately?"

Well, there's an alien-controlled policeman manhandling me, that's pretty weird. "No."

"You keep turning up, Catherine. Why is that?"

"Um, coincidence?"

"Sure it is. I'm going to need you to come with me." Gripping my elbow tightly enough to bruise, he dragged me towards the school.

"Am I under arrest?"

"No."

"I have rights, you know!"

"Actually, you don't. And soon enough you won't have any freedoms either."


	22. Chapter 22

The policeman took me through a passage in the back of a janitor's closet. A narrow passage with wide, flat steps led gently downwards. Getting captured was, at least, an easy way to get to the yeerk pool.

That wasn't a good thing.

The cavern itself was huge. Vast. A miniature city underneath the city, supported by some method that I couldn't see. As big as a stadium; bigger. Maybe two statiums. There must be dozens of entrances! I didn't dare guess how many Controllers there were. Earthmoving equipment stationed around the walls showed that they were planning on making it even bigger.

And there was screaming. Pleading. Crying. Indistinct at first, but clearer as we descended. A man begging for freedom. A woman crying hysterically. A child screaming for its mother. The pool itself was a vast artificial lake in the middle of the cavern. No, not a lake, more like an enormous swimming pool with steep, straight edges. There was a little wall around it, broken only for piers on each side. It was impossible to guess how deep it was; the liquid was thick and opaque like mud, and teeming with giant grubs. Yeerks. It smelled... not bad, exactly, but odd. I didn't have any scents to compare it with. The piers on our side of the pool had people calmly queuing, segregated by species. Mostly human, a few hork-bajir, and a single, wider taxxon pier on the end. All the piers had hork-bajir guards, the hork-bajir piers being the most heavily guarded. As I watched, a woman moved to the front of her line, walked calmly down the pier and crouched down. A hork-bajir took her elbow gently to steady her. She tilted her head and lowered it to just a few inches above the pool. A long, thin stream of goo wriggled its way out of her ear and then thickened – I identified it as a yeerk just as it dropped into the pool.

Instantly, the woman started screaming. "You can't do this! I am a free woman! I have rights! Get your hands off me, you filthy monster!" This last remark was directed at the hork-bajir who had steadied her, who now had a hand on each arm and was physically carrying the struggling woman off the platform. It carried her to one of a large row of cages where humans were packed, ten to a cage, and threw her in. Some of the caged humans were threatening their guards; others were crying, or sitting quietly in the corner, resigned. I spied one or two groups of people having quick, furtive conversations. A man was braiding a child's hair through the bars, both of them struggling not to cry. Tom was in one cage, gripping the bars as if he could separate them with his hands and screaming abuse at a hork-bajir guard. Yeerkless hork-bajir were in a separate, sturdier row of cages; they snapped in a foreign language and slashed at the air and bars with their armblades.

Behind the cages were some nondescript warehouses. But further over, on the other side of the cavern, was a food court and a large cinema screen playing some movie I hadn't seen. Humans were sitting there, relaxing, eating and laughing. With a feeling of nausea, I realised who they were. They were people who had given themselves to the yeerks willingly. They didn't need to be caged. They were just waiting until their yeerks were done in the pool, so they could collect them and go home.

On the other side of the yeerk pool, the side opposite where Controllers were depositing their yeerks in the pool, was another set or piers. On these piers, individuals dragged from the cages were having their struggling heads forced under the surface of the pool. They calmed down instantly, were gently helped up, and walked calmly off the pier and away.

No. That was not going to happen to me. I kicked at the man holding me and tried to bite his wrist, but he was having none of it. He was a policeman; both the human and the yeerk probably had a lot of experience restraining people. Ignoring my whimpers, he dragged me over to a hork-bajir guard, had a very brief discussion in the alien language the hork-bajir were cursing in, and dragged me onto a pier.

I couldn't win. I told myself that there was no way I was going to scream, but ragged sobs caught in my throat as he forced me along the pier. It didn't matter that my muscles were trembling and I felt weak; I couldn't have fought him anyway. He was going to force my head into that liquid and an alien was going to crawl into my ear and take over my brain. I'd be helpless to stop it smiling at my parents while planning their enslavement, helpless to stop it taking over the world, helpless to stop it pulling up all my memories and betraying the Animorphs.

If it learned what I knew, all the Animorphs were done for. Dead, or worse, Controllers. Five more morph-capable Controllers like Visser Three, leaving nobody to defend the planet.

There was only one thing I could do, then. I couldn't escape. I could only stop the yeerks from learning what I knew. I'd let the policeman force my head into that alien sludge.

And then I would breathe in.


	23. Chapter 23

There's a sort of peace that comes when you know exactly what to do, and know that you cannot fail. A kind of relief, I guess. I was still sobbing, still pushing against the policeman's arms, but it was okay that he was winning. I didn't have to break free. And my resolve only had to last a little longer, another half-minute or so. I didn't want to die. I savoured every breath in my ragged throat, every hot drip of a tear on my cheek, like somebody desperately trying to savour their last few minutes in bed before their alarm rings. But it was all going to plan. I didn't need to fear for my life; my life was no longer on the cards.

Suicide attempts were probably common on the pier, I imagined. But then, maybe not. After all, the cages were hardly set up to make suicide impossible, so maybe it wasn't common. Maybe self-preservation instincts were stronger than I thought. Escape attempts... they might be common. But as someone who'd never been a Controller, being dragged down the pier by somebody who probably didn't do this normally... I was pretty sure he wouldn't expect it. Pretty sure.

I just needed one long, deep breath.

I struggled as he tripped me on the pier and pushed my head down, towards the surface. Then I heard something that was familiar, and terrifying, and gave me one last spark of hope.

The deep, reverberating roar of a tiger.

The end of Jake's roar was lost in the sound of shouts and screams, which were in turn drowned out by Rachel's elephant trumpeting. The policeman holding me looked up and his grip loosened; I kicked him as hard as I could in the crotch and ran. I ran past Marco, who was tearing the door off one of the cages with Big Jim's powerful arms. I ducked under Tobias, diving and swooping, raking his talons across the eyes of Controllers who were trying to hit him with their laser weapons, and missing. I ducked inside a warehouse, found a dark corner, and morphed.

Half a minute later, a horse was in the fray. My horse brain was panicking but I focused it, told it the herd was in danger, I needed to guard the herd. In a horse herd, it fell to the leader, the eldest female, to keep the herd from danger and, if necessary, delay or dissuade predators while the herd fled. So I scanned the mixed crowd of Controllers and freed humans until I spotted Tom, and darted for him. He was standing back-to-back with a woman I didn't know, kicking and punching at the human-Controllers who were trying to shoot the crazed tiger and angry elephant in their midst. Rachel had several small burns on her sides, but that just seemed to make her madder as she trumpeted and charged through Controllers. It looked random, but after a moment I realised she was trying to clear an exit path. Jake was leaping and slashing at the hork-bajir who were trying to get close enough to injure her. Tobias was still darting for the laser guns and for the eyes of their owners. I could hear Marco somewhere behind us, still destroying cages.

I nudged Tom and nickered. He exchanged a glance with the woman he was fighting beside, and they both leapt onto my back.

[I've got Tom,] I told the others. [Let's go.]

[Cassie! Are you ok?!] That was Jake.

[For now. Can we get out of here, please?]

[As soon as these annoyances GET OUT OF THE WAY!] Rachel screamed, charging for the entrance. I cantered beside Jake, trying to keep up with Rachel and take advantage of the gap she left in the crowd. But we were falling behind. Then, suddenly, our path was blocked by taxxons.

[Up and over!] Jake suggested.

[Up and over!] I agreed.

We leapt. I felt my hooves bump against the taxxon, and the air around us warmed with lasers. Jake's claws sliced a large gash in the taxxon beneath him. Suddenly, three others leapt onto it and began tearing it apart, swallowing chunks while it was still screaming. A couple of human-Controllers got in the way and I saw, with horror, the policeman who'd dragged me to the pool slip in some spilled guts and disappear into the mouth of a ravenous taxxon.

[I guess they won't be too hard to deal with in big groups,] Jake said, sounding as sick as I felt.

[Guess not.]

[Marco, Tobias, where are you?] Jake demanded. Rachel's huge leathery head was visible ahead, still wading toward the exit.

[Right behind you, Fearless Leader,] Marco replied. A huge gorilla landed next to us.

[I can fly, I'm fine,] Tobias added dismissively.

[Then we are out of here!]

Then, a sudden quiet went through the attacking Controllers. The crowd suddenly thinned. And he stepped daintily into view.

Visser Three.

Surrounded by taxxons and hork-bajir, he didn't look all that dangerous. But menace radiated off him, and fear off them. Tail-blade poised aggressively over his head, he stepped forward.

He stared at us for a long moment. A taxxon sidled up to him and spoke. It was a weird, half-whistling sound. "Ssssweer trrreeesswew eeeesstrew."

Visser Three said nothing. He just looked at us, eyes squinted in an andalite smile.

[This taxxon fool says you are wild animals,] Visser Three said. [They want to know if they and their siblings can eat you.] He laughed silently. [But I know you are not animals. I know who and what you are. So. Not all of you andalites died when I burned your ship.]

Andalites! Of course he would think we were andalites. Andalites, after all, had the power to morph, and humans didn't. Perhaps we could get through this with our identities intact.

[I compliment you on getting this far. But it will accomplish nothing. Because now, my brave andalite warriors, it is time. Time to die.]

He began to morph.

[I acquired this body on the fourth moon of the second planet of a dying star. Like it?]

Nope, I was wrong. We weren't going to get through this after all.


	24. Chapter 24

From Visser Three's andalite body, the creature grew. Tall as a tree, towering over even Rachel. Eight massive legs. Eight long, spindly arms, each ending in a three-fingered claw. And from the place where the top set of arms grew came the heads.

Heads. Plural. Eight of them. This creature had a thing for the number eight.

Even the hork-bajir-Controllers backed away. Even they didn't want to be near Visser Three when he morphed this way.

But the taxxons edged in closer, crowding around their leader like a pack of hungry dogs looking for table scraps.

I was frozen in terror. Stunned. Neither my human brain nor my horse instincts had any way to really process what I was seeing.

[Run!] Jake yelled. [Up the stairs!]

I didn't need telling twice. The two people on my back gripped my sides and I bolted for the stairs. The others ran behind me. A small group of free humans and even some hork-bajir (I have no idea how Marco got _those_ cages open) ran in our wake.

[Yes, run,] Visser Three crowed. [It makes a more challenging target.]

Then, Visser Three struck.

From one of the heads a round, spinning ball of flame erupted. A ball of flame that flew like a missile.

[Oh, you have GOT to be kidding me!] Marco.

It skimmed through the air towards me and I heard a scream. The woman on my back fell to the floor, screaming, rolling around to extinguish the flames enveloping her body. [Sorry!] I told her, and kept running.

[Target practice!] Visser Three laughed. He fired fireball after fireball, one head after another.

One hit Rachel in the ear and made her scream in my head and trumpet in terror.

The air was full of fire.

But Rachel was clearing a path and the rest of us were behind her. She got to the stair entrance. Stumbled.

[You're not going to fit, Rachel,] Jake said. She began to shrink, and began stumbling up the stairs. We followed. Visser Three's huge form blocked the stairs below us. He was too big to fit up the stairs himself, and he couldn't seem to aim his fireballs very well, but he'd solved that problem by firing them over our heads. We were trapped between his bulk at the bottom of the stairs, and a wall of fire higher up. The passage itself was, fortunately, made of stone and cement, and didn't catch fire.

"I don't think so, you creep! Not this time!" Tom bellowed. He leapt off my back and threw himself at the Visser, grabbing one of his arms. Visser Three threw him off with one swing, but he had to pause in his volley to do it. The stairs ahead of us were clear.

[TOM!] Jake screamed. I nipped at his ankles, not letting him pause as we dashed up the stairs, away from that hell and into freedom.


	25. Chapter 25

[I'll kill you all, andalites! Run away, it doesn't matter! Whatever it takes, I'll kill you all!]

We were of the opinion that it did matter. We were alive. And if we could help it, we'd stay that way. We hadn't succeeded in saving Tom, yet. But we were alive. We knew where, and who, our enemy was. And the policeman who'd been suspicious of me... was no longer an issue.

I counted. _One, two, three, four_. Rachel, Jake, Marco, me.

[Tobias?] Rachel called down through the collapsed, still-burning tunnel.

[I'm fine.] His voice was very faint. [Lying low until I can leave without suspicion. Go.]

[We're not leaving without – ]

[If you come back down here, all of us are in danger. Get out. I'll see you later.]

Rachel was growing next to me, expanding, shifting back towards full elephant. She dug at the tunnel with her tusks, but it was cut off. It'd take her hours to get through.

[Rachel,] I said.

[We're not leaving him down there.]

[No, we're not. But we're cut off. It's easier for him to escape without us.]

[And if he gets in trouble?]

[Unless you know another way down there,] Marco cut in, [there is absolutely nothing we can do here except get caught by the yeerk forces that are definitely on their way by now. Let's get out of here!]

Reluctantly, Rachel started to demorph. Reluctantly, so did the rest of us.

Reluctantly, we left.

The school was still crowded, but we managed to slip out before any alarms were raised. Nobody stopped us.

We didn't talk much on the way home.

I couldn't sleep. I was too worried about Tobias. Instead, I took a little notebook, a pen, and a torch. I grabbed a watertight box from the barn and then headed out through the back paddock, towards the National Forest.

There was a tree on the edge of the forest that was easy for me to find, even in the dark. A tree I'd marked years ago. Even through regrown bark, the inscription 'Cassie + Jake' was clearly visible. I counted three trees to the right and dug a little hole. That should be a safe enough place to hide any suspicious materials.

I recreated my previous night's notes, as well as I could remember them. I added everything I remembered from the yeerk pool, and started a list of known Controllers. If we were going to do this, I was going to make sure that we knew our enemies. Eventually, though, I ran out of new information. There was no choice but to bury the box and head home. To curl up under my warm blankets and be alone with my thoughts.

Tobias tapped on my bedroom at about three in the morning, in red-tailed hawk form. I pulled the window open to greet him. "Tobias! Are you okay?"

[Uh, sort of, yeah. I already saw Jake but I figured he wouldn't call everyone in the middle of the night...]

"What's wrong? Tobias, what happened?"

[I just... waited in a crevice high in the wall until things calmed down.]

"Oh. Good. Can you get home tonight? Do you need somewhere to sleep?"

[That's not really... It took longer than two hours, Cassie.]

"There were warehouses in there. Warehouses without people in them."

[I couldn't get to them without being seen.]

"I'm... I'm sorry."

[It's ok, I think. I mean, we made them scared, right? We're gonna make a difference here.]

"Yes. Yes, we are." But would it be enough? Five kids, one of them a bird. Against an empire.

Tobias seemed to guess what I was thinking. [The andalites will come,] he said. [Until then...]

I nodded. "Until then, we fight."


End file.
